“For whatever reason, no one is sure why, these people had blood pumping in their veins that allowed them to live for very long periods of time. I’m talking about five, six, even seven hundred years or more.
As a direct descendant, that blood is my blood, too. As well as that of thousands and thousands of my relatives. My father is nearly four hundred and fifty years old; my mother admits to two hundred and seventy-five.”
Hunter couldn’t help screwing up his face at that last fact. Two hundred and seventy-five…
“Now, most people who are not of Holy Blood live to be about a third of that age,” she went on. “But some will live longer because they have varying strains of the Holy Blood in them, too.”
“How did that happen?” he asked.
Xara frowned. “Because in the past, it was not beneath some of my more enterprising relatives to sell a drop or two — for incredibly huge amounts of coin. They say it still goes on today, which makes this even more disgusting.”
She played with her hair for a moment and then went on.
“So you see, the more connected you are, the closer you can get to escaping your own mortality. That’s what makes a person a Very Fortunate. They have a little more of the Holy Blood in them than a Fortunate, who has a little more in them than a first-class citizen and so on and so on.
“Now, it’s up to you to stay out of the way of a moving air car, or a stray Z-gun blast. But if you live in a safe part of the Galaxy, as many people do, then you probably have a long, long life ahead of you. And that’s the problem. Everyone wants it — but no one really appreciates it, because they’re so obsessed with how much longer they can live, even by a year, a month, a week, based on how much or how little Holy Blood they have in them. It’s crazy. It leads to all kinds of prearranged marriages, the pairing up of total strangers, industries to figure how much Holy Blood you have and how many years it’s going to buy you. It all leads to a total lack of diversity and misplaced energies. And it’s created a class system that is not healthy for us as a race and that I personally find appalling.”
She looked over at Hunter. He was staring very intently into her eyes.
“And how old are you, my dear?” he asked her.
Smile. Teeth.
“Just nineteen!” she replied happily. “I’m still a kid. Thank God my parents waited a long time before they started working on their heirs. I’m surprised they even stopped long enough to consider it at all.”
She let her voice trail off. The sun was just about gone by now. But she looked even more beautiful in the waning light.
“But you, Mr. Hunter — well, you’re like a breath of fresh air. Because for once, finally, we find someone who really doesn’t know where he came from. And look at him: He looks normal. He looks like the rest of us. But that’s what makes you unique, in a place where no one is truly unique. At least, no one we know about.”
Hunter wasn’t sure what to say, so he didn’t say anything. She turned toward him again.
“So then? Can I see it?” she asked him.
“Sure,” he answered right away, adding after a beat: “See what?”
“The clue. I heard that you carry something in your pocket — something that might give a hint as to where you came from.”
Hunter’s hand unconsciously went to his left breast pocket. The piece of cloth. The faded photograph.
He never went anywhere without them.
“There are two things, actually,” he confessed. “And I haven’t shown them to very many people.”
The smile returned. So did her hand on his knee.
“I’d be honored to see them,” she said sincerely.
Hunter retrieved the cloth and picture and carefully unfolded them. Xara looked at the picture first.
“She’s beautiful,” she said in a whisper so low it was lost on the wind. “Do you know who she is?”
Hunter shook his head no. There were some days he couldn’t bear to look at the faded picture. The emotion that welled up inside him could be that intense.
“I don’t have the slightest idea who she is,” he told her.
She studied the cloth. Red stripes, white stripes. A big blue block. Designs like stars. It was uneven, yet still symmetric. In a world where just about everything was built as a triangle, the horizontal lines looked alien. And fascinating.
And familiar.
“I was afraid of this,” she said.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Hunter replied.
She squeezed his hand again. “It might not seem so apparent now,” she said. “But not knowing where you’re from. It’s a gift. And it’s something that you might not want to give up so quickly.”
Hunter just stared back at her.
“What are you talking about?”
She turned very serious.
“While the rest of my clan is out doping it up,” she said, “I’ve taken it upon myself to learn as much as I can about what went on long before my father’s Empire went into ascension. I’ve been able to learn little bits and pieces of ancient history — things that happened even before the First Empire. Even before the people they call the Ancient Engineers inhabited the Earth. I’m talking about four to five thousand years ago.”
She looked deeply into his eyes. “If you had a chance to really find out where you came from, would you take it? Would you being willing to do anything, go anywhere, to find out?”
Hunter sat straight up on the rock. “Of course… that’s all I care about. It has to be… Why?”
She squeezed his hand a little more and penetrated his soul with her enormous emerald eyes.
“Because I think I know how you can find out…”
Hunter stared back at her. “Really? How?”
Flash!
18
The planet was indeed red and the dirt was indeed made up of tiny diamonds. And yes, there were canals here, too.
Lots of them.
This was Mars. First planet to be puffed by the Ancient Engineers. Apparently in the older texts, what few there were left of them, the Ancients believed that Mars ran best when it was crisscrossed with canals — just like Earth. So they built them, hundreds of them. So many, the planet could look like a red gemstone wrapped in a huge spiderweb if the sun’s rays were hitting it just right.
Mars was also considered a sacred place as well, on the same par as the bridges that spanned the triads on Earth. Travel here was restricted to only the Specials and an elite contingent of the Solar Guards. And while it supported its own atmosphere and was enveloped in vast plains and forests running along the canali, there was a definitely mysterious air to the red planet. Next to Earth’s Moon, where travel was banned for all, even the Specials, Mars was the least-visited body in the solar system.
But Hunter was here now.
He and Xara had popped in near a place called Bogus Charmas. It was near the southern pole, a region where stunted trees and dull red grass coexisted with bitterly cold winds and frozen-over canals. There were no diamonds on the ground here. It was the most desolate place on an intentionally desolate world — and about as far away from the tropical beauty of Venus as one could get.
There was a small scientific station set up here — just a permahut built next to a big hole in the ground. A string of dim lights faded away into the blackness of this cavity, underlying how deep and dark it really was.