Last Fire

I have waited far longer than I need to. I have stayed by the
controls because I dreaded what would be in the main cabin.

I grab for a sense of balance, bastard confidence, and enter.

The main cabin is empty and silent. My Avatar has taken Prima to her room.

I move past my bedroom to the next; Priam is sitting on the floor in the room I’d ‘assigned’ him;

When I’d purchased this Viper, the first thing I did, was unpack Priam’s
stuff in that room. I set it up, leaving my stuff in a lump on the deck,
because to set up ‘his’ cabin, meant ‘he’ was here.

I’d set it up, and when I’d left Earth, spent time in this room,
imagining Priam in the kitchen.

His treasures were on the ledges, his clothes in the closet.

He must have looked into the rooms, saw the pyramid he now held, realised;
this was his space, so took the pyramid, sat on the deck, leaned against the
bed, zombified.

He reminds me of someone who was rescued from certain death and has
not yet regained his soul.

I stand and wait, noticing how old and frayed his uniform appears, and more,
how his skin doesn’t gleam, and his hair is dull.

He is still beautiful, but yet, he is not who he was, for he just sits on the
deck, leaning against the bed frame, his legs straight out, engrossed by
the pyramid.

Eventually he feels me, his eyes climb to mine. Though my impulse is to run
and embrace him, something warns me not to move from the doorway.

I look at him, he seems dazed. I search for a topic that wasn’t ‘charged’…went to default;

“Are you hungry?”

He pauses a moment, about to respond in his other language, changes it; “Yes.”

I step to him, reach down. He looks at my hand, puts his within, I pull him to
his feet.  For a moment he looks at me. Not to make the moment heavier, I let
go of his hand, move to the galley.

I realise he’s not behind me as I open the cupboards, hear the shower running.

The shower is very short, for him. He’s washed his hair, roughly oiled it and his
skin. He is now dressed in jeans and an open shirt. His feet are bare.

He comes to the counter, looks at what I’ve chosen. He stands behind me, puts
his arms about me a moment, holds me to his body, then lets go, turns to the food.

I go into the bathroom, shower, find myself trembling. It’s okay. I tell myself.
Every thing will get back to some norm. He’ll ratchet down from wherever he
is, and we’ll talk. Sooner or later, he will talk.

I wash my hair, style it. Try to look better than I have for the past year.

I dress in a bright pink body suit I never wear, just to lift my mood, then go
to my daughter.

In French she says she is hungry, I correct her to English. I talk to her about
Papa, and after about ten minutes we enter the dining area. I put her in
her high chair, take my seat, Priam serves us.

They ate slowly savouring each bite. He was telling her the names of the
dishes in his language, I was filling my belly for the first in how many days.

I could tell he was quite hungry, because after he’d scraped his plate he took
another portion.  He was not himself. Priam knows exactly how much he can
finish and takes precisely that amount.  That he’d misjudged and had to take
more set off alarms.

That’s the thing about living with someone who doesn’t communicate, you read their actions.

When the meal completed, he moved the dishes and I took Prima to bathe and to bed.

I took my time with her, for I was so afraid of who he had become, for this shadow was not Priam.

When she was asleep, I came into the main cabin. Priam wasn’t there. He was
in his room, sleeping in his clothes.

Thinking I could postpone, I went to move, but it was too late. He sprang up
as if under attack, saw it was me, became embarrassed.

I neared, sat on his bed. Very carefully, not moving, not reaching out; “You are safe, Priam.”

He looks at me a long time, as if we are strangers. There’s a confusion in his
eyes you see when someone is drunk or high. I wonder if he isn’t drugged.

Yet this wasn’t all about him. It was also about me. And I was far too
concerned about me to smile and slide.

“Can you talk to me?” I ask.

He closed his eyes, sucked air, as if having to speak painful. In a whisper;

“Can not you comprehend without my having to place words?”

Carefully as if stepping on stones across a raging river I reply:

“Priam, I love you. But I can not know by osmosis. I don’t know what happened,
I don’t know why you feel the way you do.”

He looks at me, uncertain, and I appreciate;
I have never understood him.
No.
I have never known him.

And he says;

“I believed if I was loved…she…you would understand.”

He is saying this as if it were cause and effect. As if a definition of love was the absorption of one by the other.

Maybe if he were normal or I a Gennie there’d be bridges, there’d be terms of
reference. But I have no idea what his life was….
that is not true.
I have a fairly good idea of what his life was.

I reflect on the last minute we’d been together, on our yacht, bound for Earth,
when his people came for him and…
how did they know where he was?

How did they know where he was?

Suddenly, the word ’safe’ wasn’t sounding so true…

“Priam, will they…with your brothers…will they come after us?”  I ask, nervously.

“For what reason?” he asks as if my question is ridiculous, “I do not have the key…”

The key….
was so important he murdered fifteen Dalmar to get it…

I think of the Movie…Doug had to put the ‘key’ into a lock. The lock ‘read’ it, read
that Doug was a Gennie…and allowed him to..
Without the key…
Pete’s Gennie needed the key…

The key.
The key was a beacon…
they tracked us…
via the key.
He doesn’t have the key.
Good.

He looks away from me, I put my hand on his arm, feel his smooth skin. He
turns back to me, the expression in his eyes is peculiar.

“It was not my father lying on the deck”.

For a brief moment I am unsure of what he has said or meant, then recall our first conversations.

“I am not anyone’s child…I am a clone, Firebird…born to die. Without the Key, worthless.”

He demands I embrace what it meant to be a clone. What it meant to be created, not born.

When certain I understood, he continued;

“You are the first to see me special. But I am a glass bead on a long
necklace, upon which is one diamond. I am there to prevent you from
seeing the diamond.”

“To me, Priam, you are the diamond…”

He doesn’t hear me;

“They said, (and he rattled off something in his language which sounded harsh
and ugly and in the tone of voice you’d expect from a guard at a prison camp,
then translated);

“Agouti, do you know this Worm?”

(So that’s what his people call us)

His accent betrayed he hadn’t spoken English since he left me.

“Those who are Agouti came, view the monitor,I see Doug.  I told them he knew everything….”

He stops talking, calms himself.

“An agouti is like a rat…that is what I am…”

“No, Priam, you are not, you are not. You are a man.”

The softness of his voice belied his words,

“A man? I do not even have a name, Firebird. Priam is not my name…Priam is my batch.”

He stared at me as if he’d thought I knew…
maybe I did.
Having seen three other men, identical to him; yes.
I did understand…
in a part of my brain held for nightmares and worst case scenarios I knew.

“There is no life for This Priam. He is less than one of your robots is to you.  He
exists as spare parts, as a decoy. Now that war is over, we have no purpose.”

He held a moment. My eyes, my body, my heart, blinded by his beauty. His
words, his experiences tumbled into insanity, I couldn’t find concordance.

“You think I am someone worthy to be loved. Someone to whom you can give
gifts. I am only that when we are together. You have shown me what it is to be
alive and I can not return to nonexistence.”

And before I could absorb what he was saying;

“You are the first to ask if I am hungry.”

His voice breaks on the last word. He shakes himself, looks away.  Then tears track his cheeks.

When I’d captured him, had him in the forcefield, I asked if he were hungry.
It was a little thing.
Common courtesy.
He shouldn’t have had to tell me.
Everything about him pointed to an empty life where the smallest thing, like
that souvenir pyramid, became significant.

Although he was wonderful and beautiful in my eyes, among his people he was
nothing. One of ten, hundred, thousand…how many?
A clone.
Knowing he was a clone.
Warehoused until necessary, if necessary.
One of ten, hundred, thousand…how many?
What matter if ten or a hundred or a thousand Priams died. He was ’spare
parts’ in a well stocked warehouse.

I turned him from what he was into who he is.
I had asked him if he were hungry.

And then, because I’m a Bounty Hunter, because I can always find the flaw in perfection, I think….

It doesn’t have to be love.

It doesn’t have to be love.
He has no where to go.

Images race through my mind from the day we landed on Smudge.
He had no where to go, no where he wanted to go. He had gone to Ahmet to
retrieve the vital Key, then met me at Habibi.

He may have acted as if he had choice, but he didn’t. I was the only door in his wall.

Whatever his mission or use, if he was with me he would be the only Priam.
The only one…
not a melee of ten, hundred, a thousand exactly the same versions of a ‘batch’
but singular and special.
As long as he was with me.

He knew how to ‘play’ me; I have to give him that.

He avoided being left on Smudge, got me to buy him a yacht on Earth, waited
for me in Space, and when, on New France, heard me tell my robots that I was
going to take him to the Space Port and leave him, he went into the freezing
night to catch pneumonia so I couldn’t leave him anywhere.

There is no life for ‘This Priam’ unless I am willing to ‘adopt’ him.

And the fear and pain rose in me, those emotions I had banned from my mind the
day on the yacht when I thought;

it was better to be wrong than to wrong.

He realises what I’ve just discovered.
Softly he asks;

“Firebird, now that you know, do you want me?”

Yet, the answer came quickly;

“Yes.”

Our eyes are locked.  He searches for the lie, for the rejection, the denigration.
But I love him, and it’s not because of lack of alternative.

Lies do not matter, deceptions collapse into themselves. He is with me, has
always been with me because I am all there is in his horrible empty life.

I have it all now.
All the details.

I am ponderously aware of this moment in time.
I have to say the right thing.

I say it;

“Alexander.”

“Alex ander?” he repeats.

“Yes, Alexander Firebird…”

For a long moment he looks at me and I can see the precise second when he
comprehends what I have said, what it means. He suppresses his excitement,
and as if it is a matter of slight importance;

“Show me how to write that in joined script…”

I go into the other room, to the desk and think;
it doesn’t matter why he is with me, as long as he is with me to stay.

I grab a stylus, pad, return to sit beside him on the bed, slowly write the name
in glorious hand.
He takes the stylus, traces the letters, then writes
them, slowly.

I watch him.
I think…
if he doesn’t love me,
if he doesn’t know what love is,
he will learn.