SOME OF THEM DIE
At one far end of the green border in front of the house, were rooted two silver birches, thin, slender, their pale leaves sheltered a wildish garden of small, climbing orchids, having sprouted fallowly, since spring, amongst the grass blades. They were clutching spirallingly around the trees trunk, as would vines. He should transplant them in pots, inside, before fall, soon, he thought, while making his way tranquilly to the front door.
Standing in the doorway, still, he hang on his leather coat and gazed outside one last time: orchids had just begun to come into blooms, exit the tiny buds that hooded the white or mauve petals of the flowers that now timidly emerged. These new colors had replaced the vegetal treillis that previously covered the fresh green ground with its darker shade, made of small leaves shaped like triangles with round edges.
Kate was wearing white pants that day; evening was just there when she had decided to hover over her wild orchids to bring them back in their pots, protected, for the winter, by the walls and windows of their inside garden. The white of her pants had slowly been covered with the brown traces of her fingers when she placed them on her hips, stood back, stretched and looked down at her work before kneeling in the grass again. Boone easily recalled her body, narrow despite its curves, profiled against the orange light of nightfall which filtered between the branches of the high trees on the opposite side of the street. Her forehead wet with a thin layer of perspiration, she had smiled to him while he was staring at her in the window. The image broke up, then down, then apart, slowly. It just began to waver, then it moved away and grew distant, it remained at the frontier of his mind, like a word shivering on the tip of your tongue, but that is not voiceable yet. Or something that one feels with all their souls without, though, being able to take it out of the clouds of indescribable that surrounded it. The image, her gestures and his, all of these people and the words of then gradually lost their meaning their bonds to a vague past faded away. Soon, their were anonymous again. In the hands of Kate, the few orchids with a cluster of earth in their roots she was holding disappeared, as if they had slid out of his vision range. Her fine hands, too, slid out toward oublivion, as soon followed the rest of her body. All that remained of her was her green eyes, and her smile; both survived for a moment, just before his implant took him over and dislocated the image of his wife, tearing it away from the feeling it awakened in him. All that was left to him was a shapeless marasmus of emotions, all of it and each of them nameless because of the blinding mix which had brought them together.
Boone licked his lips and closed the door quietly, cutting the CVI flashback short. He stepped fro inside the small hall and was startled when he looked at the golden-bordered mirror on the wall on his left: his eyes did not meet the ones of his reflection and he realized that the mirror opened, as would a window, on a glimpse of another world. It was dark out there. He heard the soft lapping of rainfall against the glass and the heavier plocs as bigger droplets landed on the frame outside. His slight smile melted on his lips, he closed his eyes and felt heavy again.
His left arm that, he thought, had been still resting on the doorpanel was suddenly folded under the back of his head, between his short red hair and a comfortable pillow. His other arm was thrown over his own stomach, his skrill pulsing in coordination with his breathing. He was laying down. William Boones eyes were already wide open when he awakened completely, precautionously returning to awareness and remembering where he was, the time it was and how real was it making sure the flashback and the dream caging it were both gone. Remembering the state of things. The flashback lingered for some more time at the limit of his mind while he was languidly taking himself back, pushing the CVIs influence away, but Boone finally saw, through the fog left behind by the numerous, superimposed illusions, the frame of the window make it out of the wall.
He had been taking a nap on a sofa, but he was home indeed.
His dreams were often clearer than the many flashbacks relayed to him through his implant, but they were not as clear as they once had been. He woke up every morning with a sensation of forgetting more than he should it was not the same feeling that had, before the CVI, followed the moment when sleep started to fade away, it was not the fugitive and light impression that dreams must escape human spirits, nor the impression that it had dissipated enough for dreamers to doubt of its very existence and for there be left of it only a few remnants linked to each other by the conviction they should be since they all belonged to an imaginary world.
No. This new sensation no longer bore that softness that was human and, on the opposite, his dreams were, if more confused, much more aware. He was not the one to be dreaming: the dream was the one catching him, engulfing him into its timeless lapses. And then it became a realm of its own, with its details, its twists and its past. The dream seemed so real that it occupied the entirety of his consciousness and lingered before fading away: he found himself already awake for minutes when his consciousness saw reality again. The dream and its own bazaar of memories and thoughts superposed itself to reality so well that, then, each element was slow to return to its real origin and going back to reality each thing going back in their place, and the dream becoming, once more, a piece of the brief inspiration of a slumbering mind. But the dream bound itself so tightly to reality that, sometimes, he had to take minutes to clarify the confused mess that his implant provocated by inverting the roles of each minutes during which both his mind and the CVI were convinced that the dream was a pocketed sideworld attached, in parallel, to the real reality.
Boone stood up. The room was plunged in darkness, the only light came from the tall lamps that stretched along the street and from the dim night light, discreet shine scattered amongst the kitchen furniture. Smiling to himself, he recalled how he had fallen asleep while listening to the sizzling of the water drops in the birch leaves that whispered in the wind.
Through the open window, the odor of the rain mostening earth, ciment and grass reached his nose. The implant stood up and attempted some hesitant, sleepy steps forward. He had sat himself there with the intention to give a rest to his numb muscles, but, the fine chirping of drops crashing against the delicately laced vegetation of the outside adding to his fatigue, he had allowed himself a rare moment of honest sleep. It seemed to him that such peace was rare. This peace, from the rain, from the freah air, from the nighty and cool mood, had transfered to his body. He felt infused with a strong well-being.
The noise of the rain was barely audible, at the limit of what the human ear could seize, shaping out there an almost silent and unanimous painting that could not be directly seen. It was more peaceful than silence itself.
His eyes still attempted to pierce their way through the nocturnal darkness, seeking for the shape of a tree, of a silhouette, somewhere in the shadows, something else than obscurity, but they found nothing else than the crystalline echoes of the rain droplets hammering their sweet beat on the outside, transforming it, all of a sudden, in a spectre of itself, sketched out by the rains ricochets on it when his global beeped.
Boone here, he said, rapidly prompting himself into awakening, and straightening his standing.
Boone? said Sandoval, We have a major security breach in the Rocky Mountains lab. I need you on the investigation team.
Boone frowned. An investigation so soon? The teams there already? he asked, channeling his entire concentration in the conduct leading it to his CVI, trying to fetch there for the sparses souvenirs and informations concerning the operations led in the Rocky Mountains Laboratory. What happened? he asked finally.
Grasping the memory he had been roaming through his mind for, he recalled that a team of taelon scientists worked there on a project related to human genetics, seeking for a way to associate their fragile genome to the Taelons energy encoding. He had met Thaum, the leader of the taelon scientific team, some time before. He remembered having remarked on his face the volative impression of a profound weariness and having noticed in his voice such melancoly that he had never seen before in a Taelon. He had found in Thaum a look of rooted oldness, like if age tugged at him from the inside, like if a kind of pain dug within this body that, already, was invaded with tiredness.
A body heavy with wisdom. When Boone had asked him if he were affiliated with the Synod, Thaum had smiled in a manner reminding him of Daans very own only an impression, nothing in the shape of it, in the tone, in the appearance, in the curve, something maybe in his eyes and had answered him that he had detached himself from everything which did not display the rigor of science since a time longer than it was possible for a Human to conceive.
Perhaps he found in this rigor a notion of rest. In this agility, in this absence, total and absolute or any form of impetuosity. Maybe this was ceaselessly refreshing to him
Boone had only briefly touched the scientific domain during his studies truncated by his military enlistment, but he did recall that sciences pleasant philosophy of methodic exactitude had aroused in him a sympathetic resonance.
The image of Thaum was erased slowly, too, in his memory. The scientists smile frayed, it fell towards the depths of an unadmitted sadness.
Boone heard, in counterpoint to the other implants voice, the murmur of rain falling.
The laboratorys been destroyed, Sandoval finally informed him.
His back tensed as Sandovals voice grew considerably dry. In his head, thoughts slipped by his mind while familiar faces ran in front of his eyes, stopping on Jonathan Doors, Boones CVI recalling the image of him, leaning over a computer, his lined face lit by the blue, cathodic light of the flat screen.
Accidental or intentional?
Sandoval did not answer. At least not too directly. A Taelon is dead.
Boone tightened his fists in order to dissipate the shadow that passed on his face as he pressed his teeth together, feeling relieved by the tension that cumulated in the powerless bones of his jaw. Who?
Thaum. Sandoval cut the line.
Boone slipped his coat back on his shoulders, passing on a costume, readying himself for yet another masquarade amongst all those he played nowadays.
This was a guerilla and he fought successively in the ranks of both parties involved. Tonight, suddenly, he felt globally indifferent over it he needed to though he recalled having appreciated the short conversation he had had with Thaum. But this task was his: learn to know, then learn to appreciate the members of an extra-terrestrial species whom, while keeping themselves at a distance allowed Boone a brief period of accessibility, in order to, on the later, learn that his other employers had patiently orchestred the death of these alien beings, thanks to him. These were two slopes of a sole world: the Resistance and the Synod were heading toward one same fight. And Boones task was simple: he was to be used as a liaison as much as he tried to escape from both the Resistance and the Taelons, extracting his anonymous existence from their shared imbroglio. Trying to recuperate himself amongst this jumble while his will wavered from one side to the other.
The sun blinded the blue sky, its warmth invaded everything that the previous night had not already filled.
The taelon embassy of Washington closed its doors behind him, catching him within a cool den. He could have recognized this building only by the feeling, against his skin, of the fresh air running down the blue corridors, or only by the camouflaged sound of his feet hitting the ground softly, as if the solid floor absorbed the chock and the sound.
The alien freshness closed around him as a hermetic pellicule, laid flat against his skin. This airs freshness was different, it did not gain this artificial smell that air conditionning dragged in its path. Nor did it bath his skin with the coldness of wind. This freshness seemed to be universal, as if he had been suddenly transfered into another universe, where everything was different, where the temperature itself was very different where the feeling was different. The freshness of the air here seemed to relieve his body of the heat in an embrace, as hot water cleansing your skin under the shower. As if heat had been nothing but a layer added to the surface of his body and this freshness emanating from the inside of the embassy possessed the capacity to anihilate it.
He had felt a sentiment of profound strangeness, of important interruption when he had entered in this construction for the first time and a long time had been spent before he had realized that perhaps the atmosphere itself was not exactly the same as the one surrounding the human beings outside.
After all, maybe the Taelons prefered to slightly alter the terrestrial atmosphere, thus adapting it to their needs while retaining its basic nature, which allowed it to still be a breathable component for Humans to use, though an imperceptible difference gave them this sensation of misplacement. Being misplaced here, in this environment conceived to support other lifeforms primary needs. A twisted version of the homesickness that one felt when standing in a foreign territory, amongst people whom remained strangers despite a few similarities. Twisted by the fact that Taelons had brought down on Earth their own piece of alienness, catching them in a place that Humanity believed to be its sole own and troubling everything in offering them, for the very first time, the most complete absence of similitudes on which their eye could have hung They were humanoids, which at first reassured most, then seemed immensely misplaced aftermath: it seemed bizarre that creatures sharing so thin a common ground with Humans would look like them so much. As if the familiarity between their physical appearances was inappropriate or vulgar.
From an exterior perspective, the few traits that Humans and Taelons did share seemed to seal the breach, if only a little, and to disminish this flagrant difference, if not extinguish its flame. But William Boone had seen some things Moments when the human aspect of Taelons seemed to be a grotesque parody, an authentic mask hiding and bending the features beneath, especially when a sparkle appeared in their eyes which Boone felt the unknown power of, without being able to determinate yet what was such feeling and what did it come from, or again what could such cold life associate to, or, further, why had it chosen to associate itself to Mankind.
Walking through the spiralling corridors leading to the floors of above where had been shaped, stuck between two rounded sections, Daans audience chamber, Boone allowed a sad glow to wander on his features while remembering the somber shapes of the investigation team men, leaning over a portion of the debris, barely visible under tiny mountains of ashes.
His CVI pulled him back, his mind seemed to stumble backward.
On the edge of the canadian borders, a delicate drizzle rained over the Rocky Mountainrs more efficiently than monsoons rainfalls would have, it drenched his clothing and invaded each fragment of his skin with cold wetness in a matter of minutes. Ronald Sandoval and Lili were there already, standing under a frail awning that barely protected them of the finest of rain carried by the violent bursts of wind.
Boones eyes once again met the charts at which the three of them were looking, Sandoval using the plans of the buildings to identify this pile of broken and melted ciment to the entrance arch, this other part of the debris to a part of the taelon bioslurry equipment quartered by the explosion and sent, flying, against the trees of the timidly avancing forest, nearby the main installations. They were on a plateau where the air was thin, in the center of a clearing where a few pieces of intact taelon material were faintly glowing, still, in the ambient darkness.
Investigators followed suite, leaning, bent over the ground, raising their voices to a yell to fight the wind as it threw their words away all of them, all melted into one single image, all their movements, all their words, all their chaos, all the rain on their faces a thundering and lightning vision of human shapes, somber in a yet more somber decor. All of them seemed to run away from Boones eyes, plunged in the heart of a flashback on which his memory finally could triumph, speeding up the rhythm toward the moment he was seeking for. He took hold of it with as much assurance as if his fist would have closed solidly around an object that had been priorly eluding its grip.
The elements constructing through filaments of night a fully human reality parted away, as if the portion of the memory flash was sheding itself, quietly. Then, Daan detached himself from the tenebrous surroundings cradling him, he was luminous in the night, the blue glow radiating from his body brought light to a three meters large circle around him. Boones eyes had barely bounced on him at first, quickly associating the blue-silvery light to another piece of fallen taelon material and dismissing it. Though, this once, the implants memory stopped distinctly, surrounding Daan with an aura of light that seemed to grant him some divine powers. The Companion was sparkling amongst the pale lighting of the frail projectors erected around the site. Sparkling Despite his exocovering drenched with rain, despite the droplets that rolled timidly down his alabaster skin Sparkling in the foggish night, terribly aside, terribly outside. Outwordly.
A distance was put between them and Daan by the aliens own nature, by the grace contained in every of his steps, by the fragility carried away by his stare opposing silently the rigidity of his body, yet inspiring an invincible strenght of their own. A graceful force, a dissimulated fragility which Daan liked to use to his advantage, using it as a velvet glove to hide the iron grip within.
In the implants souvenir, Daan looked haggard then, imprinted with a rare sorrow. His steps were heavy on the ground covered with small ponds of rain. His entire consciousness was slowed down by what had happened here.
Instantly, the asian features of Ronald Sandoval shaped themselves before Boones recall, replacing the sight of a Daan who seemed sparse. And troubled.
Agent Sandoval appeared to him, burried under the shadows, as if his black cashmeer coat was trying to swallow him, to imprison him within its world and have the man fusion with night itself, joining his caramel-colored skin to the ebony tone of nightsky, surrounding him with obscure wisps of smoke through which Boone gazed at the other mans thin lips and listened carefully to his voice, tense, shared between Daan and the express orders the situation urged him to commit to.
Between the implant, the man and the hybrid that the Taelons had meshed the two into.
Boones eyes did not leave Daan, feeling the chock, the surprise and a large portion of dread melt with the rain drops that, rolling down the plastic tent over his head, falling in his short hair. Whats he doing here?
He recalled his own worry in a dizzying, dazzling, evasive and mazed vision
He twisted around, glimpsing on Lilis face a perplex expression which he did not know how to interpret on the moment he saw it as a small part of worry diluted in a greater part of ignorance, losing itself in an even bigger sea of curiosity, now swelling and undulating as the situation at hand demanded her to mobilize all of her attention, apprehension and senses towards the numerous and urgent tasks.
Sandoval kept speaking. Growing dark and darker yet, plunging further and further into darkness. More somber than night itself now. His voice growing more like black, more like sadness. Boone knew that, behind the mans straight facade, the imperative of his implant held his feelings in a key grip and had his fingertips dance and tremble in febrility and anxiety. He came with us from the embassy He didnt tell us
Its dangerous, he shouldnt be here, Boone continued, calmly, focusing on Daan, and fueling Sandoval paralysed thoughts by giving him more words on which build their conversation.
I know, Boone! I told him so! He ordered me to keep going with the investigation to leave him alone Sandoval protested, defending himself as much in his own eyes as before Boones judgement, opposing the primordial orders of a Companion to his CVIs imperative.
The implant lowered his head and envelopped himself in his long coat as much as he could, crossing his arms over his wet vest. Captain Marquette looked at Sandoval from behind him; her intention joined Boones own, as they briefly stared at the darkened man with sympathy almost pity, while Sandoval looked away, trying to give himself a contenance.
She added: He said that him and Thaum were
He used a taelon word You understand their language, Boone? Sandoval prompted, almost hopefully, before closing his eyes in rememberance. Mehircha he finally mumbled, gesturing vaguely with his hand.
Hmehirrsha? Boone repronounced, breathing in the first H, breathing out the second one, as should be done.
In his memory, understanding had landed upon him before he even phrased the word, it then sank down with the repeated sound of his voice. As his lips were speaking, his mind was already activating, mobilizing its reasonning capacities into action.
The rests of the explosion became a little darker yet, as night centered itself around the silent and standing figure of Daan, subtly shimmering under the rain.
What does it mean? Sandoval asked, precipitately, seeing the signs of comprehension on the strong features of his subordinate.
Boone sought in order to grasp an appropriate english term, before answering: Spouse.
Lili swore quietly and Boone thought he saw Sandovals breath catch in his throat as his almond-shaped eyes closed, painting his features with a new sort of bitterness.
Boone contemplated the Companion again, left to himself, bare, almost abandonned under the rainfall, and he felt that his own breath, took too much time to make it out of his lungs.
The men from the investigation team revolving in tight-set bunches around the collapsed skeleton of the laboratory stepped out of his way simultaneously, parting, as if to form the two walls of a corridor leading him to this blue, glowshaped humanoid lifeform. Boone realized, at this moment, as he had done twenty hours before, that this strange feeling he believed he had glimpsed of in Daan was a grief that clang almost passionately at the Taelons face usually covered with a severe serenity.
The silvery light emamating from Daan dissolved within the nights indigo tone. Which, itself, divided itself infinitely in front of his eyes, in the end it melted in the light coming from the circular ceiling of the audience chamber as a solid pilar of glimmer in the sunlight.
Daans presence seemed lightly altered. Because Daan had always had a certain imposing bearing, an aura, this capacity of projecting a degree of himself outside an impression that swirled around his personna like a shot of wind and that was as familiar to Boone as the rhythm of the aliens discreet footsteps or the melodious shade in his voice. This presence was different today In fact, Boone was the one responsible for such change: his perception was the core of it, since it was the implants regard on Daan that had changed, not Daan himself. His perception now allowed him to be introduced in the aliens intimacy, unknowingly to Daans own will and perhaps contradicting that very will, he had demythologized the Companion, granting him an appearance closer to a human one, more open to effusions, maybe. At least reached by grief as well. Not more accessible, but less faraway.
This sudden glimpse of the Taelons privacy, this permissivity had abruptly reduced the depth of the gulf between himself and Daan Boone had not been seeking to know so much about his alien superior and mused that maybe the Companion would have been equally unwilling to let him or other Humans become aware of private matters concerning him if Thaums death had not prompted events to move forward, forcing Daan to publicly confront his grief.
Some Companions, Boone recalled, had repeatingly denied that the Taelons felt emotions and perceived events like the human beings did. But the implant knew at present that, despite a certain difference in their extremities, their primary emotions and the Taelons were common. Maybe they did not allow themselves to be affected by their emotions as much as Humans did, but they did feel things to a similar degree. Even though the manifestation of their sentiments might be held back by their Commonalitys powers on their minds.
Confusingly, Boone realized he had never considered the possibility that Daan might be something else, someone else, than the one he appeared to be for the befenit of the Humans in his employment: a manipulative, graceful, terribly pragmatic diplomat, filled with some alien charm William Boone had never thought Daan could, in any fashion, have had a spouse many, perhaps children, maybe, a home a past rooted elsewhere and a future exterior to all what Earth could offer.
He did not know much of taelon privacy. It was during one of his Eunoia lesson, in Daans company, that he had glimpsed of the term standing for spouse in the taelon language he had learned of it as he had learned of so many more, with detachment, and had known of its meaning with a certain amount of surprise, the sprout, maybe, of the same bewilderment that had returned today, but that had, by then, faded away among the scales of more important words he had to know. Words dealing with taelon strategy. Scientific or generic words that the Resistance had seen before in coded documents.
He knew that the taelon society was ruled by a thin number of laws which, in majority, concerned ritual procedures, since moralities, through the Commonality, had gone from a guideline to a naturally adopted obligation, thus Taelons had no need to impose ethics laws to themselves. These creatures were bound to each other by the nature of their minds. In such an exchange, it was impossible to talk, or to lie. Messages travelling through the Commonality, between two taelon spouses, could be pure emotions, without the need for words that would have been an insult to their signification. Boone knew that the Taelons reproduced in a fashion similar to Humans, he knew, as well, that their existence span exceeded by much the one of a human being, he knew that some of them had more than a spouse at the same time, he knew that, since countless time, they made no difference between fatherly affection or amorous attention, considering love as a general feeling of closeness
Each of these bits of a grandiose difference had slid through his mind unnoticed, finding some room that Boone had hidden beneath a thought of brief ignorance. He believed it was definitely not his role to know of taelon privacy; he had to learn of the defense systems, had to know of their projects and perhaps of their intentions, in extension Daan had always been to him a figure of authority, the image of a stranger whose comprehension was unthinkable, whom he could barely sketch out the motivations of
It is in this fashion that, slowly, the Companion started to appear different to him. Almost more human.
The renewed and changed image of Daan was clasped around his torso with a very particular warmth, the same one that occurred when you reunited with effusion, in private, with a friend whom, in public, was forced to treat you as a subordinate. This familiarity seemed to be due now, to be obliged; he accepted it, as another portion of the somewhat accessible, if enigmatic, alien Daan was, a new stanza mutingly added to the contract Boone had signed with two opposed parties. A secret clause, reserved for his eyes only to blink at.
The Taelon observed the day outside the embassy, his slender body was silhouetted against the sky so blue, almost white, ironed red-hot. He tilted his head slightly to the right, toward the entrance, while his back was turned to it, when the steps of William Boone rendered his presence obvious to the Companions knowledge.
You asked for me, Daan?
The Companion turned to him after spending a few seconds looking at him from the corner of his eyes; instantly, Boone found himself gazing at the same vision that had occured on the past night, amongst the rain drops that slowly, minutes after minutes, were becoming more tangible than a translucent aura.
He had approached the Taelon, had brushed against the sadness wrapped around him, part like a mist, part like a stranglehold. A proud kind of sorrow. A diplomatic sorrow.
This was Daan.
Daan was sad and bitter, keeping his head high and his features barely hinting of what waves undulated beneath.
My sympathies his CVI reminded him, scattering the words he had used, that night, in thousands of echos, fragmenting them, deviding them, dispersing them amongst the air, sending them to flee and fly, apart and everywhere, as many butterflies or pieces of fireworks, or fireworks shaped like butterflies.
Sympathies Sympathies -Thies -Ies
He would have liked to say more. To be understood more than that.
He would have liked to feel more, to allow himself to extend a hand in Daans direction. But the Companions indestructible pride had impregnated his attitude and implanted the habit of distance within William Boone, too. Any other words would have seemed misplaced. Impolite. Distorted. Words were impossible to use.
Boone would have wanted to dye his presence with an aura similar to Daans, thus telling in a more simple fashion what did his mixed sentiments point at.
A concrete and last echo of his words imprinted itself in his mind, the last syllable amplified in volume Like a scream Sympathies- Sympathies -THIES
Sympathetic.
He had laid his fingers on Daans forearm, feeling it being frail under the grip of his hand. Daan had turned his eyes away, perhaps wishing to hide a certain, not too well-defined to Boones human eyes, portion of himself. Wishing to be himself again, in front of his implant, at least.
His human facade had dissolved itself in a short and unique spasm, transmitting through lighting a myriad of emotions, that thus appeared to be more numerous, more detailed, and greater yet than if Daan had named, described and told the legend of each and every of them The interior itself of Daan had been split open, exposed, piercing through the human appearance. Pure energy ceaselessly rattled there, slowly, almost melancolically.
It crackled, fell, fell again, fled, ran back, bent on itself, rolling around a luminescent core, ate it away, dissolving it, reducing it to nothingness to better scatter it elsewhere. Constant rebirth. Constant evolution. Constant pain.
From there had origined the unsinkable sentiment of a labyrinthic aura evolving and stoplessly becoming around Daan himself, envelopping human beings in its mysterious foldings and unseen branches, taking them away with itself on a journey of alien beauty An unaccessible beauty, ununderstandable to every form of human thinking A beauty which charm was to be exterior to everything that it was humanly possible to reach and conceive. A beauty that seduced in its strangeness, in its extraordinary exotism A beauty that was not, in itself, beautiful, trully. Which was nothing but an immense and unmovable fascination.
This beauty was sadness doing. The Taelons were so different, so entirely outworldly, compared to human beings that even their greatest grief seemed to be charged with a kind of delicacy that hit the human senses in a great and spheric wall: Humans called that grace. The Taelons, maybe, would have named it despair, perceiving the slight alterations or schemes of it more than the human mind was apt to.
Daan had wrapped around himself this graceful sadness like a cape, descending from his shoulders and cascading down, smashing itself against his whole body, floating down until it reached the ground, escaping him, escaping his control, integrating to the outside and thus tensing everything surrounding the Companion with a painful gracefulness.
The resigned beauty of sorrow The beauty of sadness when it was protected with a perfect and shining armor of dignity.
The dignity, forever a taelon prerogative. It gave them, if not harmony just yet, at least the appearance of it.
Commander Boone, Daan started, slightly lowering his head in the mans direction. The implant was almost surprised not to hear the Taelons voice tremble. I have asked to see you to demand the present case be closed.
Boone heard no trembling, but noted that the Companion had not named the case itself, relying on the innuendo Boone had instantly known what Daan meant, yet the why puzzled him. He still frowned. I dont understand
Daans face was invaded with a rare kind of a severity, almost a condescending one. Before all, Boone saw into it the traces of an immense sorrow that the Companion chose to awaken on this occasion. I believe I understood that the goal of such investigation is to determinate the causes of the incident that has occurred, am I correct? Daan went on without bothering to wait for an answer while Boone stepped slightly closer to him. If such is indeed the case, then there is no reason for you to pursue your searches, Daan said, lifting his left hand, signifying to the implant not to approach further.
You know what happened? Boone asked. It was nearly not a question.
Daan smiled not in sadness, but in a strange mix of fatality and vexetion. I know, he confirmed, stripping his voice of any form of emphasis.
Daan continued to speak. Boone tried to stop the fall of the words that he had not meant for Daan to pronounce, again maybe. You dont have to inf-
Thaum chose to destroy his own existence
Boone sighed softly. He pressed his lips together before speaking out, cautiously, trying to detach from his voice all forms of emotions, hoping to make the message be clearer, more sparse if rougher, to make it as sincere as possible as if, by cutting out the rounds and the edges, by tearing off the grace, the beauty and the politeness, he could cut to the chase, to the grief, as it was so easy to do with a human beings mind. I would like to be able to choose the correct words to tell you how sorry I am about this
You do not have the slightest idea what you speak of, Daan whispered, leaving to flow in his voice a filament of pure pain, as a hint of brilliant and strong color rolling amongst the troubled waters of a river. The Companion turned back to the sky, prefering to fix with his eyes a part of shining emptiness instead of having to meet another set of emotions which would revive his own. He freed me from the pain he felt as he freed himself he said, clearly to himself, rather than to Boone.
Daan seemed to want to collapse down. Collapse from the inside.
Fall down into ruins, like the cascades of energetic colors Boone had glimpsed before that he had felt, at the tips of his fingers, when he had touched the Taelons forearm, on the previous night, amongst cold, spurting wind and rippling rain and that now threatened to close upon themselves, hermetic. A Human, maybe, would have fallen down, in tears; using them to excise the ill amongst which all lifeforms found existence be tedious. But Daan could not and would not cry.
His lips were sealed. His eyes were shut. His white skin seemed to absorb sunlight.
Do Humans cry over their dead? Daan demanded, seeking for an answer that, maybe, would fit a little to his own pain, to his own feelings. A correspondance
Boone closed his eyes, his face and chest bathed with a sudden warmth that, as a monotoneous chanting, spread, little by little, in the entirety of his body. On Daans face, which Boone could only partially, the Taelons having turned his back to him, all form of dignity was shuting down, becoming transparent, leaving to ones sight a crowd of prior pains just as immense as this one.
The implant touched the palms of both his hands to the Companions frail shoulders, enclosing him in a somewhat awkward, yet comforting, embrace; the proximity seemed strange to him, as he and Daan had both worked on building the distance that separated them now. He stepped slightly closer to the Taelon, until the back of his shoulders rested against his chest.
Daan closed his eyes. Boone felt it more than he saw it and leaned forward, brushing his cheek against the Taelons temple.
Light invaded him once more, surrounding his wrists, binding him to Daan, having him share a universal category of grief which, though Boone felt it as intimately as he would have felt his own, had not and had never had a name or a meaning to the human mind. A alien pain, but a related one.
Daans distance was broken, reduced to shards falling out of him and pouring into Boone with knowledge; the Companions facade weakened.
Daan did not cry, did not shiver, did not tremble, did not scream. Did not react, or just barely so, when Boone talked to him about his wife. His dead wife.
Boone did not understand and could not reach Daan. But, at the frontier of this diffuse barrier that existed between him and a creature whom did not belong to humanity, he offered Daan a certain degree of compassion, a little rest, too, maybe Something Daan would not have allowed himself to gain in the presence of another Taelon, and which Boone, in the same way, would not ever mention to another human being.
Where his fingertips touched the exocovering suit, he felt Daan, at the edge of himself, like an energy form, all in glows and movements, wandering and roaming beneath the solid shell of the diplomat, the dignitary.
END
At one far end of the green border in front of the house, were rooted two silver birches, thin, slender, their pale leaves sheltered a wildish garden of small, climbing orchids, having sprouted fallowly, since spring, amongst the grass blades. They were clutching spirallingly around the trees trunk, as would vines. He should transplant them in pots, inside, before fall, soon, he thought, while making his way tranquilly to the front door.
Standing in the doorway, still, he hang on his leather coat and gazed outside one last time: orchids had just begun to come into blooms, exit the tiny buds that hooded the white or mauve petals of the flowers that now timidly emerged. These new colors had replaced the vegetal treillis that previously covered the fresh green ground with its darker shade, made of small leaves shaped like triangles with round edges.
Kate was wearing white pants that day; evening was just there when she had decided to hover over her wild orchids to bring them back in their pots, protected, for the winter, by the walls and windows of their inside garden. The white of her pants had slowly been covered with the brown traces of her fingers when she placed them on her hips, stood back, stretched and looked down at her work before kneeling in the grass again. Boone easily recalled her body, narrow despite its curves, profiled against the orange light of nightfall which filtered between the branches of the high trees on the opposite side of the street. Her forehead wet with a thin layer of perspiration, she had smiled to him while he was staring at her in the window. The image broke up, then down, then apart, slowly. It just began to waver, then it moved away and grew distant, it remained at the frontier of his mind, like a word shivering on the tip of your tongue, but that is not voiceable yet. Or something that one feels with all their souls without, though, being able to take it out of the clouds of indescribable that surrounded it. The image, her gestures and his, all of these people and the words of then gradually lost their meaning their bonds to a vague past faded away. Soon, their were anonymous again. In the hands of Kate, the few orchids with a cluster of earth in their roots she was holding disappeared, as if they had slid out of his vision range. Her fine hands, too, slid out toward oublivion, as soon followed the rest of her body. All that remained of her was her green eyes, and her smile; both survived for a moment, just before his implant took him over and dislocated the image of his wife, tearing it away from the feeling it awakened in him. All that was left to him was a shapeless marasmus of emotions, all of it and each of them nameless because of the blinding mix which had brought them together.
Boone licked his lips and closed the door quietly, cutting the CVI flashback short. He stepped fro inside the small hall and was startled when he looked at the golden-bordered mirror on the wall on his left: his eyes did not meet the ones of his reflection and he realized that the mirror opened, as would a window, on a glimpse of another world. It was dark out there. He heard the soft lapping of rainfall against the glass and the heavier plocs as bigger droplets landed on the frame outside. His slight smile melted on his lips, he closed his eyes and felt heavy again.
His left arm that, he thought, had been still resting on the doorpanel was suddenly folded under the back of his head, between his short red hair and a comfortable pillow. His other arm was thrown over his own stomach, his skrill pulsing in coordination with his breathing. He was laying down. William Boones eyes were already wide open when he awakened completely, precautionously returning to awareness and remembering where he was, the time it was and how real was it making sure the flashback and the dream caging it were both gone. Remembering the state of things. The flashback lingered for some more time at the limit of his mind while he was languidly taking himself back, pushing the CVIs influence away, but Boone finally saw, through the fog left behind by the numerous, superimposed illusions, the frame of the window make it out of the wall.
He had been taking a nap on a sofa, but he was home indeed.
His dreams were often clearer than the many flashbacks relayed to him through his implant, but they were not as clear as they once had been. He woke up every morning with a sensation of forgetting more than he should it was not the same feeling that had, before the CVI, followed the moment when sleep started to fade away, it was not the fugitive and light impression that dreams must escape human spirits, nor the impression that it had dissipated enough for dreamers to doubt of its very existence and for there be left of it only a few remnants linked to each other by the conviction they should be since they all belonged to an imaginary world.
No. This new sensation no longer bore that softness that was human and, on the opposite, his dreams were, if more confused, much more aware. He was not the one to be dreaming: the dream was the one catching him, engulfing him into its timeless lapses. And then it became a realm of its own, with its details, its twists and its past. The dream seemed so real that it occupied the entirety of his consciousness and lingered before fading away: he found himself already awake for minutes when his consciousness saw reality again. The dream and its own bazaar of memories and thoughts superposed itself to reality so well that, then, each element was slow to return to its real origin and going back to reality each thing going back in their place, and the dream becoming, once more, a piece of the brief inspiration of a slumbering mind. But the dream bound itself so tightly to reality that, sometimes, he had to take minutes to clarify the confused mess that his implant provocated by inverting the roles of each minutes during which both his mind and the CVI were convinced that the dream was a pocketed sideworld attached, in parallel, to the real reality.
Boone stood up. The room was plunged in darkness, the only light came from the tall lamps that stretched along the street and from the dim night light, discreet shine scattered amongst the kitchen furniture. Smiling to himself, he recalled how he had fallen asleep while listening to the sizzling of the water drops in the birch leaves that whispered in the wind.
Through the open window, the odor of the rain mostening earth, ciment and grass reached his nose. The implant stood up and attempted some hesitant, sleepy steps forward. He had sat himself there with the intention to give a rest to his numb muscles, but, the fine chirping of drops crashing against the delicately laced vegetation of the outside adding to his fatigue, he had allowed himself a rare moment of honest sleep. It seemed to him that such peace was rare. This peace, from the rain, from the freah air, from the nighty and cool mood, had transfered to his body. He felt infused with a strong well-being.
The noise of the rain was barely audible, at the limit of what the human ear could seize, shaping out there an almost silent and unanimous painting that could not be directly seen. It was more peaceful than silence itself.
His eyes still attempted to pierce their way through the nocturnal darkness, seeking for the shape of a tree, of a silhouette, somewhere in the shadows, something else than obscurity, but they found nothing else than the crystalline echoes of the rain droplets hammering their sweet beat on the outside, transforming it, all of a sudden, in a spectre of itself, sketched out by the rains ricochets on it when his global beeped.
Boone here, he said, rapidly prompting himself into awakening, and straightening his standing.
Boone? said Sandoval, We have a major security breach in the Rocky Mountains lab. I need you on the investigation team.
Boone frowned. An investigation so soon? The teams there already? he asked, channeling his entire concentration in the conduct leading it to his CVI, trying to fetch there for the sparses souvenirs and informations concerning the operations led in the Rocky Mountains Laboratory. What happened? he asked finally.
Grasping the memory he had been roaming through his mind for, he recalled that a team of taelon scientists worked there on a project related to human genetics, seeking for a way to associate their fragile genome to the Taelons energy encoding. He had met Thaum, the leader of the taelon scientific team, some time before. He remembered having remarked on his face the volative impression of a profound weariness and having noticed in his voice such melancoly that he had never seen before in a Taelon. He had found in Thaum a look of rooted oldness, like if age tugged at him from the inside, like if a kind of pain dug within this body that, already, was invaded with tiredness.
A body heavy with wisdom. When Boone had asked him if he were affiliated with the Synod, Thaum had smiled in a manner reminding him of Daans very own only an impression, nothing in the shape of it, in the tone, in the appearance, in the curve, something maybe in his eyes and had answered him that he had detached himself from everything which did not display the rigor of science since a time longer than it was possible for a Human to conceive.
Perhaps he found in this rigor a notion of rest. In this agility, in this absence, total and absolute or any form of impetuosity. Maybe this was ceaselessly refreshing to him
Boone had only briefly touched the scientific domain during his studies truncated by his military enlistment, but he did recall that sciences pleasant philosophy of methodic exactitude had aroused in him a sympathetic resonance.
The image of Thaum was erased slowly, too, in his memory. The scientists smile frayed, it fell towards the depths of an unadmitted sadness.
Boone heard, in counterpoint to the other implants voice, the murmur of rain falling.
The laboratorys been destroyed, Sandoval finally informed him.
His back tensed as Sandovals voice grew considerably dry. In his head, thoughts slipped by his mind while familiar faces ran in front of his eyes, stopping on Jonathan Doors, Boones CVI recalling the image of him, leaning over a computer, his lined face lit by the blue, cathodic light of the flat screen.
Accidental or intentional?
Sandoval did not answer. At least not too directly. A Taelon is dead.
Boone tightened his fists in order to dissipate the shadow that passed on his face as he pressed his teeth together, feeling relieved by the tension that cumulated in the powerless bones of his jaw. Who?
Thaum. Sandoval cut the line.
Boone slipped his coat back on his shoulders, passing on a costume, readying himself for yet another masquarade amongst all those he played nowadays.
This was a guerilla and he fought successively in the ranks of both parties involved. Tonight, suddenly, he felt globally indifferent over it he needed to though he recalled having appreciated the short conversation he had had with Thaum. But this task was his: learn to know, then learn to appreciate the members of an extra-terrestrial species whom, while keeping themselves at a distance allowed Boone a brief period of accessibility, in order to, on the later, learn that his other employers had patiently orchestred the death of these alien beings, thanks to him. These were two slopes of a sole world: the Resistance and the Synod were heading toward one same fight. And Boones task was simple: he was to be used as a liaison as much as he tried to escape from both the Resistance and the Taelons, extracting his anonymous existence from their shared imbroglio. Trying to recuperate himself amongst this jumble while his will wavered from one side to the other.
The sun blinded the blue sky, its warmth invaded everything that the previous night had not already filled.
The taelon embassy of Washington closed its doors behind him, catching him within a cool den. He could have recognized this building only by the feeling, against his skin, of the fresh air running down the blue corridors, or only by the camouflaged sound of his feet hitting the ground softly, as if the solid floor absorbed the chock and the sound.
The alien freshness closed around him as a hermetic pellicule, laid flat against his skin. This airs freshness was different, it did not gain this artificial smell that air conditionning dragged in its path. Nor did it bath his skin with the coldness of wind. This freshness seemed to be universal, as if he had been suddenly transfered into another universe, where everything was different, where the temperature itself was very different where the feeling was different. The freshness of the air here seemed to relieve his body of the heat in an embrace, as hot water cleansing your skin under the shower. As if heat had been nothing but a layer added to the surface of his body and this freshness emanating from the inside of the embassy possessed the capacity to anihilate it.
He had felt a sentiment of profound strangeness, of important interruption when he had entered in this construction for the first time and a long time had been spent before he had realized that perhaps the atmosphere itself was not exactly the same as the one surrounding the human beings outside.
After all, maybe the Taelons prefered to slightly alter the terrestrial atmosphere, thus adapting it to their needs while retaining its basic nature, which allowed it to still be a breathable component for Humans to use, though an imperceptible difference gave them this sensation of misplacement. Being misplaced here, in this environment conceived to support other lifeforms primary needs. A twisted version of the homesickness that one felt when standing in a foreign territory, amongst people whom remained strangers despite a few similarities. Twisted by the fact that Taelons had brought down on Earth their own piece of alienness, catching them in a place that Humanity believed to be its sole own and troubling everything in offering them, for the very first time, the most complete absence of similitudes on which their eye could have hung They were humanoids, which at first reassured most, then seemed immensely misplaced aftermath: it seemed bizarre that creatures sharing so thin a common ground with Humans would look like them so much. As if the familiarity between their physical appearances was inappropriate or vulgar.
From an exterior perspective, the few traits that Humans and Taelons did share seemed to seal the breach, if only a little, and to disminish this flagrant difference, if not extinguish its flame. But William Boone had seen some things Moments when the human aspect of Taelons seemed to be a grotesque parody, an authentic mask hiding and bending the features beneath, especially when a sparkle appeared in their eyes which Boone felt the unknown power of, without being able to determinate yet what was such feeling and what did it come from, or again what could such cold life associate to, or, further, why had it chosen to associate itself to Mankind.
Walking through the spiralling corridors leading to the floors of above where had been shaped, stuck between two rounded sections, Daans audience chamber, Boone allowed a sad glow to wander on his features while remembering the somber shapes of the investigation team men, leaning over a portion of the debris, barely visible under tiny mountains of ashes.
His CVI pulled him back, his mind seemed to stumble backward.
On the edge of the canadian borders, a delicate drizzle rained over the Rocky Mountainrs more efficiently than monsoons rainfalls would have, it drenched his clothing and invaded each fragment of his skin with cold wetness in a matter of minutes. Ronald Sandoval and Lili were there already, standing under a frail awning that barely protected them of the finest of rain carried by the violent bursts of wind.
Boones eyes once again met the charts at which the three of them were looking, Sandoval using the plans of the buildings to identify this pile of broken and melted ciment to the entrance arch, this other part of the debris to a part of the taelon bioslurry equipment quartered by the explosion and sent, flying, against the trees of the timidly avancing forest, nearby the main installations. They were on a plateau where the air was thin, in the center of a clearing where a few pieces of intact taelon material were faintly glowing, still, in the ambient darkness.
Investigators followed suite, leaning, bent over the ground, raising their voices to a yell to fight the wind as it threw their words away all of them, all melted into one single image, all their movements, all their words, all their chaos, all the rain on their faces a thundering and lightning vision of human shapes, somber in a yet more somber decor. All of them seemed to run away from Boones eyes, plunged in the heart of a flashback on which his memory finally could triumph, speeding up the rhythm toward the moment he was seeking for. He took hold of it with as much assurance as if his fist would have closed solidly around an object that had been priorly eluding its grip.
The elements constructing through filaments of night a fully human reality parted away, as if the portion of the memory flash was sheding itself, quietly. Then, Daan detached himself from the tenebrous surroundings cradling him, he was luminous in the night, the blue glow radiating from his body brought light to a three meters large circle around him. Boones eyes had barely bounced on him at first, quickly associating the blue-silvery light to another piece of fallen taelon material and dismissing it. Though, this once, the implants memory stopped distinctly, surrounding Daan with an aura of light that seemed to grant him some divine powers. The Companion was sparkling amongst the pale lighting of the frail projectors erected around the site. Sparkling Despite his exocovering drenched with rain, despite the droplets that rolled timidly down his alabaster skin Sparkling in the foggish night, terribly aside, terribly outside. Outwordly.
A distance was put between them and Daan by the aliens own nature, by the grace contained in every of his steps, by the fragility carried away by his stare opposing silently the rigidity of his body, yet inspiring an invincible strenght of their own. A graceful force, a dissimulated fragility which Daan liked to use to his advantage, using it as a velvet glove to hide the iron grip within.
In the implants souvenir, Daan looked haggard then, imprinted with a rare sorrow. His steps were heavy on the ground covered with small ponds of rain. His entire consciousness was slowed down by what had happened here.
Instantly, the asian features of Ronald Sandoval shaped themselves before Boones recall, replacing the sight of a Daan who seemed sparse. And troubled.
Agent Sandoval appeared to him, burried under the shadows, as if his black cashmeer coat was trying to swallow him, to imprison him within its world and have the man fusion with night itself, joining his caramel-colored skin to the ebony tone of nightsky, surrounding him with obscure wisps of smoke through which Boone gazed at the other mans thin lips and listened carefully to his voice, tense, shared between Daan and the express orders the situation urged him to commit to.
Between the implant, the man and the hybrid that the Taelons had meshed the two into.
Boones eyes did not leave Daan, feeling the chock, the surprise and a large portion of dread melt with the rain drops that, rolling down the plastic tent over his head, falling in his short hair. Whats he doing here?
He recalled his own worry in a dizzying, dazzling, evasive and mazed vision
He twisted around, glimpsing on Lilis face a perplex expression which he did not know how to interpret on the moment he saw it as a small part of worry diluted in a greater part of ignorance, losing itself in an even bigger sea of curiosity, now swelling and undulating as the situation at hand demanded her to mobilize all of her attention, apprehension and senses towards the numerous and urgent tasks.
Sandoval kept speaking. Growing dark and darker yet, plunging further and further into darkness. More somber than night itself now. His voice growing more like black, more like sadness. Boone knew that, behind the mans straight facade, the imperative of his implant held his feelings in a key grip and had his fingertips dance and tremble in febrility and anxiety. He came with us from the embassy He didnt tell us
Its dangerous, he shouldnt be here, Boone continued, calmly, focusing on Daan, and fueling Sandoval paralysed thoughts by giving him more words on which build their conversation.
I know, Boone! I told him so! He ordered me to keep going with the investigation to leave him alone Sandoval protested, defending himself as much in his own eyes as before Boones judgement, opposing the primordial orders of a Companion to his CVIs imperative.
The implant lowered his head and envelopped himself in his long coat as much as he could, crossing his arms over his wet vest. Captain Marquette looked at Sandoval from behind him; her intention joined Boones own, as they briefly stared at the darkened man with sympathy almost pity, while Sandoval looked away, trying to give himself a contenance.
She added: He said that him and Thaum were
He used a taelon word You understand their language, Boone? Sandoval prompted, almost hopefully, before closing his eyes in rememberance. Mehircha he finally mumbled, gesturing vaguely with his hand.
Hmehirrsha? Boone repronounced, breathing in the first H, breathing out the second one, as should be done.
In his memory, understanding had landed upon him before he even phrased the word, it then sank down with the repeated sound of his voice. As his lips were speaking, his mind was already activating, mobilizing its reasonning capacities into action.
The rests of the explosion became a little darker yet, as night centered itself around the silent and standing figure of Daan, subtly shimmering under the rain.
What does it mean? Sandoval asked, precipitately, seeing the signs of comprehension on the strong features of his subordinate.
Boone sought in order to grasp an appropriate english term, before answering: Spouse.
Lili swore quietly and Boone thought he saw Sandovals breath catch in his throat as his almond-shaped eyes closed, painting his features with a new sort of bitterness.
Boone contemplated the Companion again, left to himself, bare, almost abandonned under the rainfall, and he felt that his own breath, took too much time to make it out of his lungs.
The men from the investigation team revolving in tight-set bunches around the collapsed skeleton of the laboratory stepped out of his way simultaneously, parting, as if to form the two walls of a corridor leading him to this blue, glowshaped humanoid lifeform. Boone realized, at this moment, as he had done twenty hours before, that this strange feeling he believed he had glimpsed of in Daan was a grief that clang almost passionately at the Taelons face usually covered with a severe serenity.
The silvery light emamating from Daan dissolved within the nights indigo tone. Which, itself, divided itself infinitely in front of his eyes, in the end it melted in the light coming from the circular ceiling of the audience chamber as a solid pilar of glimmer in the sunlight.
Daans presence seemed lightly altered. Because Daan had always had a certain imposing bearing, an aura, this capacity of projecting a degree of himself outside an impression that swirled around his personna like a shot of wind and that was as familiar to Boone as the rhythm of the aliens discreet footsteps or the melodious shade in his voice. This presence was different today In fact, Boone was the one responsible for such change: his perception was the core of it, since it was the implants regard on Daan that had changed, not Daan himself. His perception now allowed him to be introduced in the aliens intimacy, unknowingly to Daans own will and perhaps contradicting that very will, he had demythologized the Companion, granting him an appearance closer to a human one, more open to effusions, maybe. At least reached by grief as well. Not more accessible, but less faraway.
This sudden glimpse of the Taelons privacy, this permissivity had abruptly reduced the depth of the gulf between himself and Daan Boone had not been seeking to know so much about his alien superior and mused that maybe the Companion would have been equally unwilling to let him or other Humans become aware of private matters concerning him if Thaums death had not prompted events to move forward, forcing Daan to publicly confront his grief.
Some Companions, Boone recalled, had repeatingly denied that the Taelons felt emotions and perceived events like the human beings did. But the implant knew at present that, despite a certain difference in their extremities, their primary emotions and the Taelons were common. Maybe they did not allow themselves to be affected by their emotions as much as Humans did, but they did feel things to a similar degree. Even though the manifestation of their sentiments might be held back by their Commonalitys powers on their minds.
Confusingly, Boone realized he had never considered the possibility that Daan might be something else, someone else, than the one he appeared to be for the befenit of the Humans in his employment: a manipulative, graceful, terribly pragmatic diplomat, filled with some alien charm William Boone had never thought Daan could, in any fashion, have had a spouse many, perhaps children, maybe, a home a past rooted elsewhere and a future exterior to all what Earth could offer.
He did not know much of taelon privacy. It was during one of his Eunoia lesson, in Daans company, that he had glimpsed of the term standing for spouse in the taelon language he had learned of it as he had learned of so many more, with detachment, and had known of its meaning with a certain amount of surprise, the sprout, maybe, of the same bewilderment that had returned today, but that had, by then, faded away among the scales of more important words he had to know. Words dealing with taelon strategy. Scientific or generic words that the Resistance had seen before in coded documents.
He knew that the taelon society was ruled by a thin number of laws which, in majority, concerned ritual procedures, since moralities, through the Commonality, had gone from a guideline to a naturally adopted obligation, thus Taelons had no need to impose ethics laws to themselves. These creatures were bound to each other by the nature of their minds. In such an exchange, it was impossible to talk, or to lie. Messages travelling through the Commonality, between two taelon spouses, could be pure emotions, without the need for words that would have been an insult to their signification. Boone knew that the Taelons reproduced in a fashion similar to Humans, he knew, as well, that their existence span exceeded by much the one of a human being, he knew that some of them had more than a spouse at the same time, he knew that, since countless time, they made no difference between fatherly affection or amorous attention, considering love as a general feeling of closeness
Each of these bits of a grandiose difference had slid through his mind unnoticed, finding some room that Boone had hidden beneath a thought of brief ignorance. He believed it was definitely not his role to know of taelon privacy; he had to learn of the defense systems, had to know of their projects and perhaps of their intentions, in extension Daan had always been to him a figure of authority, the image of a stranger whose comprehension was unthinkable, whom he could barely sketch out the motivations of
It is in this fashion that, slowly, the Companion started to appear different to him. Almost more human.
The renewed and changed image of Daan was clasped around his torso with a very particular warmth, the same one that occurred when you reunited with effusion, in private, with a friend whom, in public, was forced to treat you as a subordinate. This familiarity seemed to be due now, to be obliged; he accepted it, as another portion of the somewhat accessible, if enigmatic, alien Daan was, a new stanza mutingly added to the contract Boone had signed with two opposed parties. A secret clause, reserved for his eyes only to blink at.
The Taelon observed the day outside the embassy, his slender body was silhouetted against the sky so blue, almost white, ironed red-hot. He tilted his head slightly to the right, toward the entrance, while his back was turned to it, when the steps of William Boone rendered his presence obvious to the Companions knowledge.
You asked for me, Daan?
The Companion turned to him after spending a few seconds looking at him from the corner of his eyes; instantly, Boone found himself gazing at the same vision that had occured on the past night, amongst the rain drops that slowly, minutes after minutes, were becoming more tangible than a translucent aura.
He had approached the Taelon, had brushed against the sadness wrapped around him, part like a mist, part like a stranglehold. A proud kind of sorrow. A diplomatic sorrow.
This was Daan.
Daan was sad and bitter, keeping his head high and his features barely hinting of what waves undulated beneath.
My sympathies his CVI reminded him, scattering the words he had used, that night, in thousands of echos, fragmenting them, deviding them, dispersing them amongst the air, sending them to flee and fly, apart and everywhere, as many butterflies or pieces of fireworks, or fireworks shaped like butterflies.
Sympathies Sympathies -Thies -Ies
He would have liked to say more. To be understood more than that.
He would have liked to feel more, to allow himself to extend a hand in Daans direction. But the Companions indestructible pride had impregnated his attitude and implanted the habit of distance within William Boone, too. Any other words would have seemed misplaced. Impolite. Distorted. Words were impossible to use.
Boone would have wanted to dye his presence with an aura similar to Daans, thus telling in a more simple fashion what did his mixed sentiments point at.
A concrete and last echo of his words imprinted itself in his mind, the last syllable amplified in volume Like a scream Sympathies- Sympathies -THIES
Sympathetic.
He had laid his fingers on Daans forearm, feeling it being frail under the grip of his hand. Daan had turned his eyes away, perhaps wishing to hide a certain, not too well-defined to Boones human eyes, portion of himself. Wishing to be himself again, in front of his implant, at least.
His human facade had dissolved itself in a short and unique spasm, transmitting through lighting a myriad of emotions, that thus appeared to be more numerous, more detailed, and greater yet than if Daan had named, described and told the legend of each and every of them The interior itself of Daan had been split open, exposed, piercing through the human appearance. Pure energy ceaselessly rattled there, slowly, almost melancolically.
It crackled, fell, fell again, fled, ran back, bent on itself, rolling around a luminescent core, ate it away, dissolving it, reducing it to nothingness to better scatter it elsewhere. Constant rebirth. Constant evolution. Constant pain.
From there had origined the unsinkable sentiment of a labyrinthic aura evolving and stoplessly becoming around Daan himself, envelopping human beings in its mysterious foldings and unseen branches, taking them away with itself on a journey of alien beauty An unaccessible beauty, ununderstandable to every form of human thinking A beauty which charm was to be exterior to everything that it was humanly possible to reach and conceive. A beauty that seduced in its strangeness, in its extraordinary exotism A beauty that was not, in itself, beautiful, trully. Which was nothing but an immense and unmovable fascination.
This beauty was sadness doing. The Taelons were so different, so entirely outworldly, compared to human beings that even their greatest grief seemed to be charged with a kind of delicacy that hit the human senses in a great and spheric wall: Humans called that grace. The Taelons, maybe, would have named it despair, perceiving the slight alterations or schemes of it more than the human mind was apt to.
Daan had wrapped around himself this graceful sadness like a cape, descending from his shoulders and cascading down, smashing itself against his whole body, floating down until it reached the ground, escaping him, escaping his control, integrating to the outside and thus tensing everything surrounding the Companion with a painful gracefulness.
The resigned beauty of sorrow The beauty of sadness when it was protected with a perfect and shining armor of dignity.
The dignity, forever a taelon prerogative. It gave them, if not harmony just yet, at least the appearance of it.
Commander Boone, Daan started, slightly lowering his head in the mans direction. The implant was almost surprised not to hear the Taelons voice tremble. I have asked to see you to demand the present case be closed.
Boone heard no trembling, but noted that the Companion had not named the case itself, relying on the innuendo Boone had instantly known what Daan meant, yet the why puzzled him. He still frowned. I dont understand
Daans face was invaded with a rare kind of a severity, almost a condescending one. Before all, Boone saw into it the traces of an immense sorrow that the Companion chose to awaken on this occasion. I believe I understood that the goal of such investigation is to determinate the causes of the incident that has occurred, am I correct? Daan went on without bothering to wait for an answer while Boone stepped slightly closer to him. If such is indeed the case, then there is no reason for you to pursue your searches, Daan said, lifting his left hand, signifying to the implant not to approach further.
You know what happened? Boone asked. It was nearly not a question.
Daan smiled not in sadness, but in a strange mix of fatality and vexetion. I know, he confirmed, stripping his voice of any form of emphasis.
Daan continued to speak. Boone tried to stop the fall of the words that he had not meant for Daan to pronounce, again maybe. You dont have to inf-
Thaum chose to destroy his own existence
Boone sighed softly. He pressed his lips together before speaking out, cautiously, trying to detach from his voice all forms of emotions, hoping to make the message be clearer, more sparse if rougher, to make it as sincere as possible as if, by cutting out the rounds and the edges, by tearing off the grace, the beauty and the politeness, he could cut to the chase, to the grief, as it was so easy to do with a human beings mind. I would like to be able to choose the correct words to tell you how sorry I am about this
You do not have the slightest idea what you speak of, Daan whispered, leaving to flow in his voice a filament of pure pain, as a hint of brilliant and strong color rolling amongst the troubled waters of a river. The Companion turned back to the sky, prefering to fix with his eyes a part of shining emptiness instead of having to meet another set of emotions which would revive his own. He freed me from the pain he felt as he freed himself he said, clearly to himself, rather than to Boone.
Daan seemed to want to collapse down. Collapse from the inside.
Fall down into ruins, like the cascades of energetic colors Boone had glimpsed before that he had felt, at the tips of his fingers, when he had touched the Taelons forearm, on the previous night, amongst cold, spurting wind and rippling rain and that now threatened to close upon themselves, hermetic. A Human, maybe, would have fallen down, in tears; using them to excise the ill amongst which all lifeforms found existence be tedious. But Daan could not and would not cry.
His lips were sealed. His eyes were shut. His white skin seemed to absorb sunlight.
Do Humans cry over their dead? Daan demanded, seeking for an answer that, maybe, would fit a little to his own pain, to his own feelings. A correspondance
Boone closed his eyes, his face and chest bathed with a sudden warmth that, as a monotoneous chanting, spread, little by little, in the entirety of his body. On Daans face, which Boone could only partially, the Taelons having turned his back to him, all form of dignity was shuting down, becoming transparent, leaving to ones sight a crowd of prior pains just as immense as this one.
The implant touched the palms of both his hands to the Companions frail shoulders, enclosing him in a somewhat awkward, yet comforting, embrace; the proximity seemed strange to him, as he and Daan had both worked on building the distance that separated them now. He stepped slightly closer to the Taelon, until the back of his shoulders rested against his chest.
Daan closed his eyes. Boone felt it more than he saw it and leaned forward, brushing his cheek against the Taelons temple.
Light invaded him once more, surrounding his wrists, binding him to Daan, having him share a universal category of grief which, though Boone felt it as intimately as he would have felt his own, had not and had never had a name or a meaning to the human mind. A alien pain, but a related one.
Daans distance was broken, reduced to shards falling out of him and pouring into Boone with knowledge; the Companions facade weakened.
Daan did not cry, did not shiver, did not tremble, did not scream. Did not react, or just barely so, when Boone talked to him about his wife. His dead wife.
Boone did not understand and could not reach Daan. But, at the frontier of this diffuse barrier that existed between him and a creature whom did not belong to humanity, he offered Daan a certain degree of compassion, a little rest, too, maybe Something Daan would not have allowed himself to gain in the presence of another Taelon, and which Boone, in the same way, would not ever mention to another human being.
Where his fingertips touched the exocovering suit, he felt Daan, at the edge of himself, like an energy form, all in glows and movements, wandering and roaming beneath the solid shell of the diplomat, the dignitary.
END
