Tales from Kalgachia - 30

The Nezeni were famed for their long lifespans - but in the case of Xantus Yastreb, Kalgachia's occluded head of state, the smouldering stresses of his role were rolling it back again. His face, while still a rude shade of yellow from his Deep Singer genes, was now a sea of fine wrinkles without any particular animation. The light in the old man's eyes, once bright and charmingly mischievous, had retreated in favour of a studious weariness. The mental capacity was still there - deep in the kernel of his mind the old hamster was still running in its wheel - but on the surface he looked as if he might crumble to ashes at any moment.

He had never been the same since his wife died - everybody had said so and he knew it well enough himself. For some years he had thrown himself into the minutiae of his work, gladly signing off to his daughter Rubina the care of his younger son Falcifer whose birth complications had killed their mother. For years he had refused to even see the boy - the memory of his existence, and the tragedy it had wrought, was just too great.

Two things had changed his position - the first being the creeping suspicion that his late wife, the famed pedadogue Ilessa Aerit, would not have approved of his cowardice, especially where it affected the boy's development. The second circumstance was more recent - his eldest child Rubina, long adored by his peers on Kalgachia's ruling Council of Perfecti and initially groomed to replace him as their chairperson, had not flinched as her lover Roy Stone was named the heir to the Shirerithian Kingdom of Goldshire. Now, in the face of all warnings about unwelcome attentions from Shirerithian oppurtunists once its ruling bloodlines were mixed with Kalgachia's, Rubina had gone ahead and taken Roy's hand in marriage. She had put her love for him before the interests of the Kalgachi state and so compromised her eligibility to lead the latter. It was only through certain contractual arrangements with the King of Goldshire, and much lobbying with his fellow Perfecti, that Xantus had convinced the latter to let Rubina retain the position of Lady Lieutenant of Oktavyan - the most senior Kalgachi office outside the Council of Perfecti itself. Officially such court politics was the idle indulgence of lesser souls whose puppet strings were enthralled to an Archonic hand, the stuff of decadent royal houses in far off lands - now to his dismay, Xantus had found himself obliged to partake in just such shenanigans for the greater good of the Kalgachi Garden. Those royal houses had probably begun their slide into moral degeneracy in just such a manner, he mused, but like them he had no choice.

Although Xantus was willing to let the Troglodyti advance somebody outside the House of Yastreb to replace him as chairman of the Council of Perfecti, the Troglodyti themselves - as well as the other Perfecti - had seen things differently. To them, for reasons Xantus never quite understood, the next Kalgachi leader had to be a Yastreb - even if it meant parking Rubina's career and scraping the bottom of the family barrel for someone else. The boy Falcifer, being the only 'someone else' available, was tentatively named a suitable candidate despite Xantus' attempts to retard such discussions. Xantus had no problem with the boy taking his place - by Rubina's accounts he was a bright child - but such a path would necessarily entail the meeting of father and son which Xantus had successfully avoided all these years. He had even refused to let Rubina show him pictures. What would the boy make of it all? He was twelve years old now, the age when the infallibility of one's parents is truly questioned for the first time. Would he understand and forgive his father, or would he demand answers? Demand penance, even?

Now it was time. All these questions and more assailed Xantus' mind as he shifted uncomfortably on the leather armchair in his home study. The door to the rest of his chambers had been left open and he heard the opening of another door from the tunnels which linked his abode to the nearby chambers of the Perfecti, deep beneath Mount Octavian. Feeling his heart quicken as he peered at the open study doorway, the first voice Xantus heard was the tuneful Nezeni tone of his duty secretary who was waiting in the lobby.

"How wonderful to see you, my lady! And yourself, young man. How are we this morning?"

"We're just fine," came Rubina's quiet but clipped voice. "Aren't we?"

A sort of strangulated juvenile gurgle followed, that of a reluctant schoolboy acknowledging an elder. Xantus' ears took it in and replayed it several times over.

"He's said to go straight in," said the secretary again.

"Thank you," said Rubina. "Are you ready, Fifi?"

Xantus heard no reply to the latter question, presumably answered by a silent nod. The carpets of his chambers masked the approaching footsteps and suddenly, before he was ready, his two visitors were stood in the doorway. The figure of Rubina was familiar enough, a passing glance confirming her graduation from the unkempt brattiness of childhood into the quiet glamour of her summer dress and red bouffant hairdo. Beside her was Falcifer himself, a little taller than Xantus had expected - he had almost reached Rubina's height already. His hair was darker, more auburn, but he had the same 'wet cardboard' skin tone as his sister. His gaze flicked sheepishly across Xantus and then around the study - he appeared as nervous as Xantus himself.

"Hello Papa," said Rubina, leading Falcifer into the room.

Xantus rose from his armchair and at the last moment restrained himself from embracing Rubina, lest it oblige him to embrace Falcifer too. He settled for a light kiss of her cheek. "Hello Beans," he said. "And hello Falcifer," he said to the boy.

"Hello," said Falcifer almost wheezingly, neglecting any term of address.

"Sit, sit..." Xantus indicated a couch located a safe distance from his own armchair. Seating himself back in the latter, he watched Falcifer take his seat alongside Rubina. The boy's movement was steady, deliberate, if not quite graceful.

Rubina, apparently enjoying the awkwardness, was displaying a rare smile. "Well here we all are," she said.

Xantus opened his mouth to say something, but his eyes caught the face of his late wife looking at him from a framed portrait on his desk. Perhaps they were not missing someone after all. "Yes, here we all are," he said, forcing a smile. He addressed Falcifer. "Rubina has told me a lot about you... you go to school down in Lapivril, I gather?"

Falcifer nodded, breaking his gaze from Xantus the first moment he was able. "Except..." he began in a halting voice... "we don't call it school in Lapivril. We call it the congelatory."

"Oh," said Xantus. "I didn't know that." The fact that the Troglodyti expected him to represent them on the Council of Perfecti, without passing on such elementary information about their deep-level domain, was oddly irritating in that moment. "Are you enjoying it?" he asked.

Falcifer's shoulders sank in the manner of all children, obliged to recite the same old bland talking points to impress fawning adults. "It's tolerable," he said.

Xantus emitted a snort of mirth which dispelled his nerves a little - he just about remembered his own childhood, giving the same minimal answers to the same dull questions. He decided to converse on the boy's own terms. "Rubina tells me you have an interest in animal behaviour?"

"Yes," said Falcifer. "I think it needs more research."

Xantus's eyebrows lifted. An opinion! "To what end?" he challenged.

"Well I don't agree with the idea that civilisation is just a human thing. I think all creatures have their own customs, but not always in forms we can understand. We understand hive creatures, bees and ants and things, because they're most like us. But consider things like bird migration, locust swarms, whale strandings. Because the animals can't understand the whole of the these processes individually, their part in them is written off as genetics, or the weather, or some other mechanical trigger. Nobody has considered that these animals are helped along by a collective consciousness, just like human societies. We don't even know whether this consciousness is transmitted by undiscovered types of physical communication, or memetic parasites or arcane processes. Sometimes the enviro-mechanistic hypothesis is a useful shorthand, good enough for lesser nations, but it doesn't explain everything and we can do far better."

Xantus theatrically blinked. "Well I must admit... I didn't expect that from a twelve year-old." He glanced at Rubina who stifled a giggle and gave him a knowing, see-what-you've-been-missing look. He looked at Falcifer again. "I think I understand why our occluded brethren wanted to send you here."

"They wanted to send me here?" said Falcifer. "I thought it was Big-Beans' idea," he nodded at Rubina, who squirmed in her seat.

"It was the idea of several people," said Xantus. "You were speaking of collective consciousness. It seems, shall we say, the will of the Garden that you visit this place and experience its operations. Even if it makes no sense to us as individuals."

"Do you trust our occluded brethren's advice when they say that?" said Falcifer.

"It got me this far," said Xantus, holding out two flat hands to indicate their surroundings.

"The past isn't always a guide to the future."

"Quite," said Xantus. "Which is why the elders among us need to wrap up their affairs while the going's still good. Only tomorrow's people can understand tomorrow's events, let alone master them."

"You shouldn't be too hard on yourself," said Falcifer. "Only yesterday's people could master yesterday's events."

"That's very kind of you," said Xantus. "But in hindsight... I could have handled... certain things better."

His hesitation left his visitors without doubt as to the certain thing on his mind. An awkward, nay outright painful silence followed, broken to Xantus' surprise by Falcifer himself:

"Hindsight has no use in the past. It can only be applied to the future. And you're..." he hesitated.

Xantus completed Falcifer's statement: "...too old to have much of a future. I get it." His shoulders bounced with laughter.

"Fifi!" Rubina squeaked in protest as Falcifer's effrontery.

"No it's fine," said Xantus. "They say the most important purpose of each generation is to avoid the mistakes of their ancestors. They know it in the Garden that I've made plenty, Falcifer, so why should I expect your forgiveness? I'm only happy that you're ready to turn my mistakes, my generation's mistakes, into a better future. If you were to step up now..." steam began to wisp out of his eyes. "...If you were to step up now, take your mother's portrait off that desk and beat my face to a pulp with it, who would I be to resist you? What good would it be for you to bathe me in deferential wibble, to say all is forgiven and nothing needs changing? To say the old order is righteous in its infliction of pain and fear and wanton neglect just because it is old? No, everything I did right will stand the test of time. Cast the rest to the flames, boy, I beg you. It's the only hope we have. I... no... no, that's enough." He held his hand up in apology to Falcifer, who was shrinking his seat at his father's outburst. "Dear little Shrub, if I'd known you'd become the boy I see today..."

"Then he might not have become the boy you see today." Rubina's interjection was as forthright as it was quick. It stopped Xantus in his tracks.

"True I guess," said Xantus with another wave of the hand. "Actually I don't guess, Beans. You're right. You're right. Well... look at the fool I've made of myself now." He wiped the condensed tears off the side of his nose with a silk handkerchief. "You know I'm proud of you. Both of you. And I'm glad you came today." He pulled a cord of gilt braid hanging above his armchair, producing the soft tinkle of a bell in the lobby. His secretary emerged at the door within seconds.

"Yes, Brother Sovereign?" came his delicate query.

"Summon Timur and the boys to see that my children get home safely. And release a Kalgarrand from the sundries box. I'm in... considerable arrears for this young man's pocket money."

"A whole Kalgarrand, sir?"

"Actually you'd better make it two. To cover inflation."