Aur Child

Freyja stood at the focus of the hyperbolic dais in feathery robes that spread from her torso about the floor like flows from an active volcano. Her startling eyes were fixed upon each council member. She employed random descants to provide individual members additional detail as she detected the need. She had selected a tone that would make her carefully arranged words be most convincing. She manipulated the sounds, the smells, and the temperature of the council chamber to maximize the effect of her arguments. The failures of the mission, the unknown whereabouts of the Odyssey, the arrival of Tellurians to whom the secret of Yellow Reserve was somehow known, the shock of Calliope’s betrayal, and the slipping away of a Aur boule had all been banded to her aim.

Bren Husk held the gavel in his massive lion paw and demanded silence from the unsettled members.

“This is uncommonly rash, Freyja.” Bren growled. “Pumping a Guest into a body you’ve only just caught and sending it out to chase down a couple of misfit Tellurians who’ve slipped through your fingers reeks with haste. Present your arguments.”

“Dear members of the council,” she began. “We have little time to deliberate. Every moment we let go by, an Aur boule, one of the three which we sought on the southern continent, retreats further into the forest, moving away from the very doorstep of Yellow Reserve. It is covered in the disguise of mesh; therefore, we cannot detect its signature. Only the tracks in the snow of those who possess it can lead us to its recovery, for however long they remain. We lost the chance to capture it on its inbound; we must agree to chase it down before it gets too far.

“You have our report. There is no strong alliance between the Tellurians Alai-Tiul and Sann-Na. The relationship is transactional. He offered to pay her for the services of a guide. She must have kept her sister, Visitor Tieri-Na, a secret. If Alai is on his own in the forest, we stand a good chance of recovering the Aur boule and, perhaps, tracking him back to the Odyssey.”

“Won’t Calliope return with the Odyssey in time?” Bren asked.

“Perhaps.” Freyja pursed her lips. “But how can we trust her any longer after what she has done here today? Perhaps her corruption has carried through to her surrogate? Her child, even. And besides,” she added, “the debriefing from Guest Dharmavaram confirms that all exosouls save hers were lost in the implosions of the two other Aur boules. Guest Dharmavaram’s difficult choice to be ported from the Tellurian body left Calliope with the Odyssey unmanned. If Alai has traveled upon the ship, which is almost a certainty given the speed at which he arrived at Yellow Reserve, he is without question its captain. When he returns to her, he may sail off anywhere and we will lose the Aur boule and the Odyssey.”

“And,” Husk added, “Talle’s Aur boule powering the Odyssey.”

“Yes, of course.” Freyja agreed. “One in the same. It was Guest Adem Talle’s ante and with this Aur boule in play, it’s now double or nothing.”

Husk frowned, the roots of whiskers on either side of his snout squished together. “Would you make play of our plight, Freyja?” Then, as a fly buzzed past his eye, he offered her that subtle wink to confirm the stratagem they had rehearsed was nearing its climax. Now it was up to Freyja to close the case.

Freyja nodded and said, “No, I would make haste to overcome it, Council President. We are at great risk so long as that Tellurian commands our ship. The Odyssey must be retrieved. Without the ship to substantiate his story, Yellow Reserve can remain hidden. No one will believe Alai’s claims any more than those of giants stealing people.”

The members of the council whispered to one another, although their discretions were pointless. Freyja heard every comment they made about her irresponsibility. She received every complaint about how they were being forced into a decision they did not like. And, most important, she listened to every dribbling worry about who would be willing to go after the Aur boule. To this, she thought to interpose.

“Perhaps you wonder whom among you should be chosen to perform this critical assignment?” she asked.

Eyes of councilmembers returned to her, their faces exhibiting expressions of surprise.

“Well, yes we do, Freyja,” Husk said with a squint of his dark brown eyes.

“I am confident that you will have no trouble finding a volunteer.”

“Is that so? Have you then already secured one?”

“I suggest a Guest who can both adjust to the body of this newly captured Tellurian as fast as possible and who already has the experience of several prior missions. Apollo has already analyzed the chemistries of the captured Tellurian and cross referenced them to that of our Guests.”

“Yes,” Husk said, “And?”

“One of the strongest candidates happens to be Guest Thyme Baddin.” The council erupted in protest. Freyja had expected this reaction, which is why she also secured Baddin’s concession to accept the mission before joining the council in their chambers. She only needed to get past the council’s flippant concerns. Freyja spoke above the raucous blather.

“His original human body type matches that of the captured body to 88%. His adjustment to functionality after exoport is in the ninetieth percentile. He operates well in winter conditions. And you may recall, he has succeeded previously in the high-risk retrieval of Aur boules on the Europa mission. He is by far the best candidate.”

Husk shook his head. “Freyja, this council cannot allow Guest Baddin to go on another mission. My colleagues on the council may chasten me for speaking so frankly, but we all know he took the heat for Guest Talle after the Europa mission. And we all know that he was anyway complicit in that despicable galivanting with Tellurians during the Europa mission.”

“I do not stand before you to argue on his behalf regarding behavior on prior missions,” Freyja answered, “but I would respectfully ask the council to consider if there is time to solicit another volunteer.”

“So, you put forth his name as an ultimatum?” Husk asked.

“No, Council President, he puts forth his name as a chance at redemption,” she replied.

Bren Husk and the other council members returned to whispering as Freyja watched on with a relaxed smile of confidence. After several minutes, Husk hammered the room to order and spoke.

“The probability of success, Freyja. Have you assessed that?”

“Apollo has had little time to do so, but his rough estimation is sixty-four percent.”

“Sixty-four percent to retrieve the Aur boule?” Husk asked.

“Sixty-four percent to track this man Alai and the Aur boule back to Odyssey and commandeer the ship before it disappears to the ends of the Earth,” she replied with a spirit of confidence that might have been considered disrespectful, if the council was not so firmly pinned down.

“How can this be done with this Alai in the way?”

“The first step is to track the two Tellurians. If they separate, Guest Baddin is very capable of recovering the Aur boule from Alai without much trouble. Then, it is simply a matter of following the man to the coast and signaling Calliope with an override beacon.”

“Overriding his captaincy, you mean.” Husk snarled his black lips.

“That is correct,” Freyja nodded.

“And what assurances do we have that Baddin won’t chuck off again with some Tellurian like that Sanna woman?”

“Specifically,” Freyja replied, “Guest Baddin will have no subordinates for which he would be responsible, and no other equipment other than the nominal cost of 127 biodegradable laser transponder orbs entrusted to his person to keep the line-of-sight contact needed for us to directly oversee his every action from here. If he even hints at a transgression, we shall perform a remote porting procedure like what Calliope’s surrogate conducted to rescue Guest Dharmavaram’s soul from Tieri-Na’s body aboard the Odyssey.”

“Isn’t that extremely risky?”

“Guest Baddin has reviewed the reports from Guest Dharmavaram’s experience and confirmed his willingness to accept this condition. If anything, it ensures he will install the transponder orbs carefully so that if anything goes wrong, he is one flick of a switch away from being safely returned to Yellow Reserve.”

“And what of the Tellurian body he occupies? Is that to be another casualty to this hack of a mission?”

“The porting would swap souls. We could return the Tellurian to his body with his memory restored from the moment before his capture in our antechamber. But if it were to somehow go wrong, the effect may also serve us well. Think of it; if the Tellurians were to come across the man’s body in the forest, dead for some inexplicable reason, it might anyway work to our advantage by bringing into question the veracity of myths about the caves and giants and such. But look, I have already argued that, statistically, there is no better candidate even if there were other volunteers. If this mission is a failure, he risks neither substantive property loss to Yellow Reserve nor the safety of any soul other than his own, which we can reasonably guarantee can be retrieved under nearly any circumstance.”

“In other words,” Husk said in paraphrase, “the worst he can do is fail.”

“Yes,” agreed Freyja, “that is correct.”

Eleven hours later, the body of Kjell-Tors exited the antechamber clothed exactly as he had been the day before, except that it was occupied by the soul of Yellow Reserve Guest Thyme Baddin.

“The rushed porting swap resulted in a few errors,” Apollo informed Freyja as they watched Thyme Baddin stumble clumsily at the cave mouth, “but due to the urgency, my model deems this result satisfactory enough for the mission scope.”

“Satisfactory? What were the errors, Apollo?”

“Emotional stability in extended dialogue came up lower than usual. Also, soul stability is particularly weak under duress. Given the season, we can expect environmental related duress, but since the mission is only to track and spy on the two Tellurians, and since we do not anticipate any dialogue with them, especially not in a stressed or violent situation, it is not expected that these errors will result in significant risk to the mission.”

“More risks, but I would concur,” Freyja replied. “To be sure, let’s double up on the transmission frequency and keep closer track of the body’s vital statistics, as well as Guest Baddin’s psychological profile. Hopefully it’s not too long a trek.”

“It will be time consuming to install all those transponders, Freyja.”

“Yes, but we’ve got to make tradeoffs somewhere. Sending an exosoul out in a fresh body with no acclimatization period and ignoring vitals is pushing things too far. Is there another option you can propose, Apollo?”

“No, Freyja. Not with those variables.”

“Then please proceed as I have instructed.”

“Understood.”

Apollo spoke to Thyme Baddin via the communications unit installed behind the ear of Kjell-Tors.

“Alright, Guest Baddin. You may leave the cave as soon as you are ready to start.”

Freyja watched Thyme Baddin’s functional statistics and visual transmission as he struggled with nausea and shakes during his first steps beyond Yellow Reserve. Between pauses to vomit, Thyme spoke to the stewards as if he were attempting to leverage the dialogue to calm down the body he was operating.

“Feels good to be in a fresh body,” he said. “Feels like a man of similar energy and stature as myself.”

He vomited again and leaned awkwardly against the mouth of the cave.

Apollo seemed to understand the man’s intentions. He said, “Your body is still reacting to the stresses of its capture and pacification, Guest Baddin. It was still digesting food consumed by its original soul when we ported you in there.”

“No doubt,” replied Baddin, between gasps for breath. Freyja could see from the diagnostics that he was sweating heavily. “I can feel the pains of some scrapes and I noticed a shallow wound when I was getting myself dressed.”

“Yes, that was incurred by a fall with the knife the man had in his hand when we apprehended him. If the body wasn’t so fit, it could have been much worse.”

“Alright,” Baddin said. “I’m heading out of the cave now. Just walk me through the mission brief one more time while I make a fool of myself getting down this hill.”

“Very well, Guest Baddin.” Apollo reiterated the briefing Thyme had been given twice before. “Follow the two humans and listen to any dialogue they may have. Establish a line of communication between Yellow Reserve and the location of the humans. Monitor their discussion for any clues about the whereabouts of the Aur boule and Odyssey.”

“Yup,” Baddin grunted as he slipped on a patch of ice halfway down the hill and tumbled into a tree. “Go on, now.”

“Additionally,” Apollo continued, as Freyja watched Baddin approach the rucksack Kjell-Tors had left at the base of the hill, “if the opportunity presents itself, apprehend the Aur boule. But this is strictly limited to circumstances that involve no interactions with the Tellurians and absolutely no risk of violence.”

“Yeah, yeah. Got it. Look, but don’t touch.”

Freyja observed Thyme lean forward and vomit on top of the rucksack.

“Why would he do that?” she asked Apollo, but Thyme had heard her.

“Oh, sorry about that,” he said with a chuckle and some spitting. “Not very gentlemanlike of me, was it?”

Freyja didn’t care for his humor. “Are you going to inspect the bag or just vomit on it?”

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” he said, sweeping the soiled snow off the top of the rucksack and unfastening the buckle. “Ugh,” he grunted again, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, “there’s some things about being here that I never liked.”

“Well, you’d make things a lot easier on all of us if you could get a handle on the bodily fluids,” Freyja replied.

“I’m working on it. Look, I’ll just take the pack with me as it seems to have all the essentials.”

Thyme strapped the sack of transponders to the top of the rucksack and threw the combined package over his shoulders. He pushed through the snow, following the parallel lines he found heading north.

“These tracks are not very fresh,” he said to the stewards as he affixed the next transponder orb on a tree branch. “The snowfall’s obscured them to some extent. If I only had the woman’s tracks to follow, I’d never be able to find her.”

“We can see the man’s tracks just fine,” Apollo said. “Just let us know if you have any trouble keeping with them.”

“No, I can see them. Anyone could see them.”

For several hours, Freyja kept a close eye on Baddin as he skied along the forest trails in what they presumed to be Alai’s tracks. She demanded a battery of reports from Apollo to monitor the body’s health. It seemed to strengthen and improve in performance by the minute as Baddin became more familiar with it. He had just checked in after another successful laser orb installation when Freyja spoke to him.

“Guest Baddin, we’ve learned more about the Tellurians you are tracking. The soul into whose body you’ve downloaded, Kjell-Tors, has told us that he has known the two Na-clan sisters his entire life. Both are forest couriers. He says he first met the man, Alai-Tiul, three days ago near the village of his clan, the Tors.”

“Quite an agreeable guy considering I’ve taken his hide for a joyride,” Baddin quipped, stopping in the darkness to catch his breath.

Freyja ignored the comment. After a moment, Thyme continued.

“Well, are they dangerous?” he asked.

“It does not appear that way. Kjell-Tors says Sanna is agile and temperamental – more reason to keep far away from her – but she is like most Tellurians, shy to violence. He seems to know nothing about Alai-Tiul, except that he came across as weak and inexperienced when he and his cousin met them.”

“That’s good to hear. He’s certainly inexperienced; the man lumbers through the forest like a diseased cow. Anything else?”

“That’s all we’ve learned.”

“Fine.” Thyme’s jaw chattered with cold.

“Oh, and our analysis of the data you’ve provided on the ski tracks suggests that you are gaining quickly on Alai-Tiul if you maintain your current speed.”

“Thanks, Freyja, I need to get going now, or this body’ll be a corpse.”

“Indeed, our monitors show that your body temperature is dropping.”

“Yeah, that’s why I need to stop chit-chatting with you.” He mumbled to himself, “Damn, you AI entities are all the same, you can waste lifetimes babbling away about data instead of acting on it.”

The communications channel was silent. An artificial intelligence entity couldn’t really be insulted; however, Freyja did not appreciate Baddin’s contemptuous tone. She quietly watched him counteract the chill in his body with a strengthening, vigorous pace. Among myriad other statistics, she assessed critical signals such as his oxygen absorption and his depth perception. With the warmth he generated, she recognized that he continued to gain confidence in that body. Despite the cold temperatures, he commanded the hunt. For a fleeting moment, she lapsed into the haunting wonder of what it would be like to be immersed in that environment with sensory capabilities uniquely human. She recalled the countless times she had tried to model those feelings, replicate their effects in a language she might understand, but it had always ended in failure. With that failure came a bitterness of how ungrateful these humans were for the gift they had: the gift to care, to feel, to hurt, to love, to know another by an inexplicable instinct that could not be written into a computer program. It was a gift that she could never possibly imagine, even though it had dangled tantalizingly in front of her continuously for all these hundreds of years. Damn them, she thought, and returned to her vigil.

Freyja watched with relief as Thyme Baddin arrived at the outskirts of a small cottage with smoke rising from its chimney just before dawn. Thyme busied himself installing a final transponder orb on a tree and testing its signal quality before choosing a discreet place in the adjacent stand of trees to set down his gear and dig a hole in the snow to place his bivvy. She didn’t expect Thyme to speak to them; she knew that he knew it was too early, too quiet, and too close to the cottage to risk engaging Yellow Reserve in dialogue. That was fine with her; as long as the communications channel was established and functioning, she would be able to monitor his vital statistics and know exactly that he was doing. She also knew that he needed to focus on these final preparations before he grew too tired. Exhaustion might come at any time and rapidly drag him down; it was a serious risk with an unfamiliar body.

“Guest Baddin,” Freyja said after receiving the signal that he was ready for a final report from Yellow Reserve as he attempted to get his body warm in the interior of his bivvy, “you have arrived safely and successfully established a communications link as required. The link is weak but sufficient. Nonetheless, we confirm registering the Aur boule’s signature. It is close. Remember: staying with the Aur boule is the priority; however, if you can learn the location of the Odyssey, we want to know that too.”

Thyme looked like he was shifting around uncomfortably. He seemed to still be shivering.

Freyja continued. “Finally, we report several deviations of your vital statistics, both physical and psychological. Please pay closer attention to your core body temperature and, above all, try to avoid any stressful, direct contact with the targets.”

“He’s switched off the transceiver,” Apollo said to Freyja. “It’s no wonder his stats are off. He’s exhausted and cold. He’s struggled all day with finicky transponder orbs and poor tracks. The human body is a meagre vessel; it simply needs rest.”

“Very well,” she said. “Notify me as soon as he wakes up.”

Part Four

REQUIEM

Beneath the waning crescent of the Oak, that being the seventh moon of the two-hundred and twenty-fifth year after Cloudburst.