Trojian Horse
Chapter 22

Hethios could not rid himself of the sickening feeling welling up inside of him. His mind was clouded by the fear he felt for Arien, its icy fingers suffocating his faculties. He was sitting alone in Arien’s room, staring at the blank white-washed walls. He had seen something growing in Arien just before his trip to the encampment. Arien seemed troubled, and while he always had questions he began asking questions about his origins, and while Hethios knew a little about it he didn’t know enough. There was also the unexpected growth in strength, visual acuity, and increased attentiveness which Arien probably hadn’t noticed in himself but Hethios was a man of science, the power of observation was his strongest quality. It dawned on him that he probably hadn’t paid enough attention to Arien until that point. When he was younger, and sickly, necessity forced them to watch him at every moment but once Arien became self-sufficient it became easier to ignore him. Hethios felt that, perhaps, they hadn’t factored in how different Arien was from the rest of them. Perhaps Arien needed more from them and it was only now that there was a chance he would never see Arien again that he wished he could have done a few things differently. Was this what regret felt like?

There were so many things Hethios wished he could have explained to Arien but it was never the right time. Now there could possibly be no more time. On reflection, he could see that Arien had always been treated like an outsider among the Vulpeculae but the alienation seemed to intensify just before Arien went away. Adjusting to living with the Vulpeculae must have been hard for him even though he did not really know what he was and especially not who he was. Hethios himself was unsure who Arien was but there was no denying that the trouble they had gone through to protect Arien made him a somebody. A very significant somebody. Nobody abandoned an entire planet for a nobody. His mind wandered back to the first day he had seen Arien. The day he was given the most important directive of his entire existence. ‘Protect him’ he was told ‘until the time when Arien’s destiny will overtake him’. Brilliant as he was he still had no idea what that really meant. He was never any good with vague utterances about the future.

Lately he spent a lot of his time thinking back to the many conversations he had with Arien but their last struck him the most. Arien had found him in his laboratory working as usual, he thought, on some troublesome equation fundamental to the functioning of an eighth-generation quantum computer. On seeing Arien standing in his doorway he had invited him inside, asking him to sit on a stack of small rectangular metal containers filled with parts for the eighth-generation quantum computer he began assembling the day before. They had sat in silence for a while before Arien broke the silence, asking him about some of his charts much like Ti-lo often did whenever she came to his laboratory. It did not seem like Arien was genuinely interested in the charts rather he was stalling, or leading to the question he really wanted to ask. Arien had spent several minutes asking about this chart and that book paying no real attention to the answers but instead letting his eyes wander to the object of his next enquiry. Arien had a firm grasp on the basic science, biological systems in Trojian flora and fauna, some appreciation of quantum mechanics, a little about Vulpecula bodily functions but sadly it seemed Arien’s education had never seemed to cater to his own needs so his questions that day should have been expected.

The first real question Arien asked was why some of the indigenous tribes did not care much for the Vulpeculae to the point of hostility. Hethios had explained that despite the Vulpeculae’s desire to avoid any conflict with them it was inevitable that their superior weapons and intellect confused the balance of power on Trojian tipping it in their favour. Arien then asked him what vule meant, to which Hethios replied that it was a derogatory term used for them, after which Arien asked him if that meant all of them. This last question warned Hethios that he was wading into territory he was quite possibly unprepared for. Hethios had replied that it meant all of them. Arien then went on to ask him why, if he was a Vulpeculae, was he so different from them all. Hethios had an answer to this question but he knew any answer he gave would lead to questions he did not have the answers to. In his bid to shield Arien from the truth he had told him that there was no easy answer to that question. Arien, of course, had asked him why. Hethios couldn’t remember what he had said to Arien to avoid answering the question but whatever it was it had been a lie. He felt ashamed. He didn’t like answering questions he didn’t want to answer but he tried his best to avoid lying. A small lie was palatable but the kind of lie he had told Arien that day gave him the first pangs of what felt like guilt. To soothe his conscience, he had buried the memory of his lie so deep in the caverns of his mind that he would forget it and replaced it with the idea that he was justified in his actions. The guilt never left him. It grew and festered until all he wanted was for Arien to return so he could put things right.

He had been a coward and now he would likely never get the chance to correct his error. The true cause was soon to be lost and he felt that somehow, he was responsible. Arien desperately wanted to fit in, that was obvious, but it would never be possible not just physiologically speaking but in a lot of ways Arien was better than them. He had changed all their lives in an instant. Every single Vulpecula. Whether they cared to admit it or not. Whether they even knew it or not. Arien had changed Hethios life the most. He had never thought himself of caring for anything in the way he had learned to care for Arien. Hethios relationship with the Queen had blossomed into something unheard of among the Vulpeculae; love? How he wished he could have told Arien all he knew that day.

Arien left his laboratory looking dejected. Hethios could vividly remember the expression on Arien’s face as he walked out. The trust they had shared seemed to die in that room at that very hour and unless he was given the chance to right his wrong, that was the last thing that Arien would remember. Forever.

Hethios was suddenly snapped back into the present and found himself once again in Arien’s room. He was sitting on Arien’s bed, a smooth wooden block with a pile of furs fashioned into a mattress and soft nabilien reeds intricately woven into a blanket. The eastern facing window, the only window in the room, overlooked the marketplace in the courtyard leading up to the palace. The sounds of commerce wafted into the room from below with the Trucio mountain range in the background providing a picturesque view. He walked over to the window overlooking the marketplace and he could tell by the scuff marks on the floor that Arien spent a lot of time looking out of the window from that precise spot. It was also from that spot that Hethios noticed a thick book tucked away beneath the mattress; an early, and comprehensive, edition of the Origins of the Vulpecula. He walked over to the bed once again and pulled out the book. He flipped it open and found a twig used to mark a page about the mating practices of the Vulpeculae queens which he considered a strange topic for Arien to be reading on. For him it was common knowledge but for Arien, he imagined, it must have been confusing to read that the Vulpeculae females were capable of asexual reproduction, laying eggs that became males. Only through sexual reproduction could a female Vulpecula birth a female. That was how Ti-lo was born, the result of a union between Hethios and the Queen. Females were revered on Trojian, they were nurturers and were always the result of a strong bond between the sexes. Eggs were hatched together in a nursery and sometimes the female infants were known to kill all the other nestlings in the litter. Perhaps Arien was wondering how he would fit into this strange world or he just wanted to understand how different he was from everyone else around him.

Arien was grossly unprepared for life on Trojian and oblivious of the war that raged on in the galaxy. All of that was his fault he felt. He had failed as a father to prepare his son for what lay ahead. In his desperation to keep the realities of the worlds beyond Trojian at bay he had starved his son of knowledge, and crippled the efforts against the domination of evil in the galaxy. Beyond Trojian was a war; a war that Hethios fully expected would one day replace its way back to their doorstep. He carefully placed the book on Arien’s bed and walked out of the room.