FALAHA'S JOURNEY: A Spacegirl's Account in Three Movements

Episode #61

"Exploration is a journey of beauty and terror, of failure and triumph. No frontier is final, no feeling is final, so keep going, keep reaching, keep asking and wondering, let everything happen to you, and seize every opportunity." As always, there was immense strength and freedom in the simplicity of Mom's words.

I was born with the greatest opportunity of all. It would be ungrateful and stupid to let it pass or give someone an upper hand in control over it.

I caught a moment and pulled Father aside, while Eyuran and Baro proceeded with their work, and Tagai continued to heal his body.

"What are we going to do about our people in other ships?" I asked.

"We should have dive-markers set in every one, or at least in most of those by now. We still need number estimates though, so I'm waiting for a word from my source."

"We have someone crazy like that to pull it off? Who's that?"

He smiled. "The most reckless guy in the whole Universe."

"Like the one who was promptly eaten before our departure?"

"Yeah, like that one." He looked at me. "Still angry at Gramps?"

"You bet I am. Eyuran as well. Shouldn't we be?"

"Oh, I can't say I'm not pissed at him anymore, so I'm not the one to tell others what to feel or think."

"Why didn't you tell me about my... thing."

"Oh, that." He smiled again. "I wasn't trying to hide it from you. Just imagine if I came up to you one day and told you about that out of the blue. What would you say to me then?"

"Oh, I see. It was that." I shrugged. "Something like: I wanted to figure it out myself! So why did you tell me?!" I sighed. "Still, if I knew in advance, I wouldn't have touched Mom in her Cold Sleep, and Quennah would still be—"

Father shook his head.

"That did not matter anymore. We had to begin our main mission. Since we left Dannan, we couldn't go to Kan Diona anyway. They would have followed us."

"Why didn't you send me there earlier, then? It's not the tradition, so what is it?"

He turned to me and squatted down, lowering his face to my level.

"Falaha, besides possibly the higher-ups of the enemy force and this Baali kid, the only people who know about your thing, as you put it, are me and now your men. Yaren did, too. It was he who told me to keep quiet, and I haven't told the truth to Ore, Rifa, or even your mom. If the three suspect something, they will not ask unnecessary questions. And the old meat was right. This is not about trust, it's about precaution and safety: you can't leak what you don't know, you cannot be used if there's nothing to gain." Sadness returned to his gaze. "If the word got to the High Command, for peacekeeping reasons you would have been dispatched. That's the best possible outcome. I don't want to imagine what would have been done to you if your power started awakening with none of us around. It's not something easy to hide. Enormous power is a toxic thing. It can poison and destroy the kindest of hearts. There might be a conflict within the Commonwealth, which could destroy us before the Baali do, or you could become a test subject, a fate probably worse than some Sangu have among the Baali. And the possibilities to use you, or others to get to you, don't end there. You are still small but I won't be able to protect you forever. Before your power manifests completely and news gets out—and if we survive this it will eventually happen—I wholeheartedly want you to claim and become the power. You, yourself, for yourself. Only then will it have a place in the Commonwealth."