Regi's Goddess, chapter 12 (Patreon)

OMG I wrote and rewrote this.  If I screwed up the logic, let me know because I had to revamp, restart, rewrite, and revise every jit and jot of this chapter.

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“What are you trying to do?” Dante asked.

Regi looked up from his communicator to find Dante watching him from several lengths ahead. “The communication network has separate channels for terrestrial and aeroterrestrial networks. I know I am unable to access the aeroterrestrial network, but I hope that as we get closer to town, that I can pick up a terrestrial signal and request assistance.”

“So satellites versus telephone wires?”

Regi struggled with the images provided by the translator. “Perhaps. Technology and the names of animals rarely translate well. That is one reason why the Coalition employs linguists. When attempting to contact a new species or navigate nuanced issues of policy, one does not want to rely on a translator program.”

Dante held onto a low hanging branch to provide balance as he climbed over a tumble of rocks. Peaches clung to the collar of his shit and chittered her disapproval with the amount of jostling she was enduring. That tone would have worried Regi, but Dante seemed unbothered by having a frustrated dop near his face. “I discovered that when I was taking French.”

“French?” The term had not translated at all.

“I speak English. French is another one of the languages spoken on my planet. When I was in school, I had the brilliant idea of using a translator program instead of doing my homework. It didn't end well for me.”

Regi could imagine the failures a translation program would generate without access to the universal translation programming with the thousands of planetary languages. “All of us are great fools when we are still young enough to be in school.”

“I can’t imagine you being stupid.”

“I was,” Regi assured him. “My parents would, no doubt, love to share stories of my foolishness, which lasted well beyond my school years.” Looking back, he could admit his decision to leave the Empire had been fueled in part by his ridiculous assumption that Gavd’s rejection of his petition was a humiliating defeat. Sometimes Regi suspected that he had chosen Poque as his new patron only because no one expected her to give any sign of favor. Therefore his failure to earn such sign did not impugn his abilities.

Dante interrupted his musings. “My father would have insisted I was a fool all the way up to the day that I disappeared. Now he gets the advantage of being a family man without the inconvenience of having me around to damage his reputation.”

Regi did not know how huuman parenting worked, but he imagined that Dante's father would be happy to have a child returned, even if he did not approve of Dante's choices. Regi assumed that's how his own parents would react, and he assumed most parents were the same. However, he empathized with Dante’s trepidation at the idea of reestablishing communication with his father. Regi felt the same, except he had left behind three disappointed parents. He assumed word of his return had reached them, so Regi feared he would have to contend with parental disapproval far sooner than Dante would.

The Empire had better communication networks and faster engines than the Coalition, but technology had limits, and their arrival would depend on whether some god-given task distracted his mother. It usually it. “Did you study language as your vocation?” Regi asked. He found it discomforting to have a conversation without looking at the other party involved, but he had already fallen in the loose rocks, so he kept his gaze focused on his feet.

Dante laughed explosively. “I barely survived high school French. And I grew up in Texas and can't speak more than a spattering of Spanglish, so we can safely say that language is not my strength.”

Huumans must take education seriously to speak of seeking to survive a course of study. “What did you study?”

“I have an Associates in equine studies.”

“That did not translate.” It was obvious from the gaps in the translator that the slavers did not speak to their slaves often enough for the translator function to identify enough target language to work smoothly.

They were climbing a small swell in the ground, and Dante didn’t speak as he clambered over a boulder that some flood had deposited on the creek bed. The passage was growing more difficult to navigate, but unless Regi could find a signal and communicate their need for transportation, they didn’t have any choice other than to continue walking. Dante didn’t answer until they were on the far side of the obstruction.“I studied how to take care of horses, recognize horse diseases, design diets, and judge quality. That sort of stuff.”

“You are the huuman equivalent of Siger without the radical religious beliefs that inspire murder,” Regi mused. Given Dante’s care for the dops, Regi should have realized that caring for animals was his vocation.

This time Dante's laugh was more musical. “I have radical beliefs, but none about religion. I try to avoid the topic. I assume you studied something relevant to security.”

“I spent my temple years studying criminal behavior.”

Dante glanced back at him. “Temple years?”

Regi held up four fingers. “Mothers’ years, fathers’ years, temple years, own years.”

Dante gave a great sigh and chose a relatively flat boulder to sit. Peaches climbed down his arm and shook out her quills while Dante propped a foot on an adjacent rock. “Are those stages of childhood?” he asked.

Regi held up his first finger “Mothers’ years. The first six years of life, a Kowri stays with his mother.”

“Do mothers stay home?”

Regi was confused to silence. Some days huuman culture felt like a mirror of Kowri in ways Regi had never before experienced. Other days Regi could not comprehend the turns Dante’s mind took. “Why would they stay home?”

Dante frowned, an expression Regi was learning to associate with confusion. “Because you said their kids stayed with them.”

“Children stay with mothers as mothers continue their work. I attended many difficult pregnancies because my mother was an exalted of Otutha.”

“Oh.” Dante frowned, so clearly he had not expected such an answer, but Regi could not imagine how a culture could function if a third of workers could vanish from productive work at any given time, or how the gods would react if Kowri decided to avoid life while raising children. Given that huuman culture had only two genders, they might have an even higher percentage of those who bore young. “That must have made it hard on your mother,” Dante finally concluded.

It probably had, but given Regi’s difficult relationship with his mother and her goddess, Regi had rarely looked at it from that point of view. As an adult, he could not imagine how he would handle Divashi’s attention while having a child. “My mother did her best, but as a child, I often believed her best was inadequate,” he admitted.

Dante snorted. “My father managed to be inadequate without a god interfering with his life. At least your mother had a good excuse.”

Regi would rather avoid discussions of his own difficult family relationships, especially since those problems were likely to appear if Regi could not get off this planet in a few sets of days. “Did other huumans judge your father inadequate?”

Dante laughed and pulled his shoe off, rubbing his foot. Regi chose a rock on which to sit, but he feared that if he removed his shoes, his feet would hurt all the more when he had to walk again. He wished his communicator could find a signal, but when he checked it, he was still without access to the network.

“My father…” Dante studied his foot for a moment before continuing to rub it. “My people don’t have exalteds. We elect people to represent us. My father is one of those elected. He holds a position called senator.” He stopped again.

Regi shifted to avoid an uncomfortable protrusion on his chosen boulder. “Many planets choose leaders that way. It is one of the most common governmental structures.”

“That’s actually a little sad. I had hoped aliens would have a better solution.”

That surprised Regi. Individuals who came from democratic structures exhibited much more satisfaction with their government than those like the Styl with challenge-based meritocracies or inherited positions like the Bewiio. “What is your concern with that form of government?”

For a long time, Dante sat in silence. “It’s a popularity contest,” he finally said. “My father will do anything to be popular, and that means he doesn’t care about family or doing what’s right. He cares about having people like him. After my mother died, my father pretty much handed me over to my grandmother to raise because he didn’t want me to infect him with social outcastedness.”

“Grand mother? A supervisor of mothers?” Regi guessed.

“Um, no. A grandmother is the mother of one of a person’s parents. She was my mother’s mother.”

“Ah.” The term “grand” was clearly used metaphorically in this situation. “I knew the parents of each of my parents, but such do not have a unique relationship to a child. It is rare for all three parents to be judged inadequate to the task of raising a child at the same time, but when such happens, another who is of the same age as the parent will take in the child.”

“Foster parents. We have those too, but my father makes himself popular by making people believe he is good at everything.”

Regi was confused. “Then how could he justify giving your mother’s years to the mother of your mother?”

“I was older than that. I was twelve when my mother was killed.”

“So you had just entered your temple years.” Those were difficult years for any sentient creature, but if huumans were like Kowri, the social awkwardness of those specific years were painful. Temple years were a difficult time of making one’s own choices and leaving parents behind for the first time, and yet making a rich variety of mistakes on such a wide range of topics that one could only suffer humiliation at the memory. Regi hoped huumans had an easier transition to adulthood.

“My dad... he played up the grieving widower role. He rode that publicity right into office. Anyway, that topic is even more depressing than your goddess’s shitty habit of dropping us in the middle of some disaster and expecting us to get out of it on our own.” Dante looked up toward the sky. “You are a horrible, horrible woman.”

Horror gripped Regi’s heart, but Divashi chose not to react. Regi hoped he was wrong about Dante having her attention or she would take offense at some point.

“So, temple years. Twelve to how old?” The sentence structure was awkward, but Regi understood the general meaning.

“We are in our temple years from twelve to eighteen, and we choose a temple—cold season, growing season or harvest season, and study the occupations associated with that temple. Many will move from one temple to another and one vocation to another. However, I spent the set of years working toward becoming a follower of Gavd. I was determined that I should solve crimes and ensure justice on each planet I visited.” Looking back, Regi was embarrassed about his misplaced enthusiasm.

“And then you get a job at eighteen?”

“Then we have own years,” Regi corrected him. “We work in professions that align with our chosen goals. The temple pays our salary as we develop our skills to the point that others may find value in hiring us.”

“So six years of schooling and six years of internship. So, twelve years of education. I guess we’re not that far off, although that would put you at twenty-four before you’re finished. And how many years have you worked for the Coalition?”

Regi had to count back the years in each of his various roles to figure an answer. “Almost a two set.”

“Two set?”

“Almost twelve,” Regi clarified. Being back amongst Kowri, it was easy to return to old habits of thinking.

“So, you’re thirty five?” Dante whistled, a shrill sound that resembled the hunting call of the betiin bird. “You’re an old man.”

“I have used just over one-quarter of the years allotted to me as a Kowri. How many years are huumans given that you believe thirty five is old?” Regi had only recently begun thinking of himself as well established in his working years. He had heard Ter argue vociferously and with great passion that any creature under a half-century was too young for any degree of responsibility.

“A few less than you. Most of us live between eighty and a hundred years. But I’m only twenty, so thirty five feels pretty old to me.”

“Twenty? You have not yet finished four sets of years?” Regi must have mid-heard, or the translation must have been mistaken.

“Nope. I’m in my fourth,” Dante said easily. He slid his foot back into his shoe with a grimace that suggested he regretted having removed it.

He had only just begun the fourth set. He should be under the direction of a temple, exploring the career options before choosing one. Regi understood that his discomfort was illogical given that different species matured at different rates, but that knowledge did not blunt his feelings. “At that age, are you considered fully mature?”

“Yep.” With a sigh, Dante stood. His grimace deepened into something that hinted at pain. “Well, except for drinking, but trust me, everyone in Texas ignores the legal drinking age. And by every other measure, I’m an adult.”

“But you are still legally limited by your lack of years?” Regi clarified. This issue was of far more import than Dante’s casual attitude suggested. Unless the translator had misfunctioned, the slavers had taken an individual who was not yet fully and completely matured by the laws of their own people.

Dante studied him, one eye more fully open than the other and the hair above one eye drawn downward. “I guess so, but eighteen is an adult for everything except drinking.”

“But the pirates chose to enslave someone too young to be unrestricted by age.” Regi would amend his reports to include that detail. That would earn any pirates they could arrested additional years of punishment. At this point, the only way to make their crime worse would be if huumans were a vernal species, but they owned two planets, so that charge could not be levied against them. “Were any of the other huumans too young to be fully unrestricted?”

Dante answered slowly. “One. Sophie—the one who died in an airlock when the oxygen was evacuated. She was eighteen.”

Eighteen. Had she been Kowri, she would have been completing her temple set of years. Regi would definitely amend his reports to include the pirates’ participation in the death of one not yet of full maturity. Now he simply needed to find some captain willing to pursue the pirates on behalf of Divashi. The Coalition had a policy of arresting and pursuing criminals only when their ships were within sight of established lanes and their communication networks. Regi felt a burning need to pursue them to whatever dark hole they had chosen to hide in and rip them from reality.

“She wanted to be a doctor,” Dante said slower. “She should have been home studying for her freshman year of college, but her car broke down in the middle of nowhere and the slavers grabbed her. She really was a kid. She’d had two good parents who sheltered her from everything, so all of us tried to help her through the hard days.” Dante’s words came slower and he rubbed a hand over his face.

“Both of you deserved to be sheltered. Neither of you was fully entrenched in adulthood. And all the slaves deserved to be rescued from such horrific conditions.” Regi got up and came to Dante’s side, capturing one of Dante’s slender hands in his. “I pledge on my honor that I will do everything I can to find the rest of the pirates and either return to Coalition or Empire space for punishment or destroy their ships, so they die screaming the black of space with no one to mourn them.” For long seconds, they stared at each other. Near them, Peaches sat with one leg up in the air as she cleaned her genitals without a care for the seriousness of the moment.

“That’s dramatic,” Dante said. “Why are you so angry now?”

“I had not realized that you were in your youth or that the one who died had not yet reached nineteen years.”

“I’m an adult. I don’t need you looking at me like I’m a child.”

“Of course you are not a child, but even by your own people’s reckoning, you are not an unrestricted adult.”

“Only when it comes to mind-altering substances. I am in adult in every way that matters, and even when it comes to alcohol and smoking, no one is going to give me grief about my age unless they hate my father and want to make life difficult for him by making me look bad. I know that one first-hand. And I handled slavery a whole lot better than a couple of the people who were older.  So lay the fur back down, and stop looking at me like I’m a five-year-old who got snatched away from his home.”

Regi had not realized that the fur along his arms was standing on end. He took a moment to smooth it back down, the long strokes of his palm soothing his nerves.  Dante reached out and rested his hand against Regi’s forearm for a second, and they again studied each other. Regi felt as if they were trapped in some moment of great import, but he could not understand why he felt that way or how he could navigate through this momentous occasion.

“I appreciate your anger because someone has to stop those pirates, but I survived. I don’t need you to ride to my rescue. So you hunt those bastards down for Richard who was the kindest man I ever knew. He taught literature at Kansas State University. You do it for David whose neck was snapped by that Styl bastard. You do it for Lucy who died of radiation and Carlos who aggravated one of the dops until the creature finally gave him what he wanted and drove a poison quill into his hand. You hunt them down to stop them from ever taking anyone else. But of all the people they hurt, I’m the one who survived. Don’t swear to hunt them for my sake.”

Regi studied Dante’s features, sure he would see some sign that Dante spoke out of a need to maintain some ephemeral sense of power. However, confidence and surety shone from his eyes. “You are a brave man.”

“I’m a practical one,” Dante said.

Regi would have argued, only his communicator chirped as it found an associated network connection. Regi pulled it from his pocket, joy staining his feelings as he turned it on. The communicator identified Alb as his caller, and Regi answered with a prayer of thanks for all the gods of each season.

“Regi a’Divashi, I have tried calling you many times,” she said.

“My communicator is broken. I thought we would have to walk the entire distance to town, but the second blessing of the gods has followed on the heels of the first.” Regi was almost giddy with relief, but he realized his answer was cryptic when Alb allowed the silence to continue long enough to become awkward.

She asked, “Where are you? Siger reported that you disappeared on his most disagreeable horse.”

“I did. I believed my goddess guided my actions, and that disagreeable horse has led me to Dante. I found him. Can you track my location?” Dante stood and scooped up Peaches before standing close enough that Regi could feel the heat of his body. No doubt he wished to hear both sides of the conversation.

“I can track your location, but I do not understand why you would be in that place.”

“Lady Divashi led me here because Siger leads the rescue teams in the wrong direction. He attacked Dante and left him out here to die. We need some followers of Gavd to retrieve us.”

“Siger betrayed the outsider?” Alb's voice was small and horrified.

“He did. It was the luck of the gods and Divashi’s hand that led me to find him.”

“Siger?” Alb’s voice had a dangerous lack of emotion. She sounded like Regi’s mother when she was trying to hide her emotions. Regi would not wish to stand in Siger’s place when the exalted Alb a’Oba caught up with him. Her tongue lashing would make the punishments of Gavd that would follow seem tame by comparison.

“Did Siger indicate whether he was working with any others?”

Regi looked to Dante, but he shook his head.

“He did not. However, he is motivated by a belief that Gavd is the only proper god to worship and that Divashi’s touch is a corruption.”

“Are you swearing that Siger a’Gavd is a monotheistic extremist?” The question carried danger. If a Kowri swore to a truth that was later proven false, he would bear the stigma and the financial penalty for his mistake. It would be better to avoid swearing until he had concrete evidence in his hand. However, Regi trusted Dante’s word in this.

“I am,” he said with confidence.

“Such individuals rarely work alone. They exist in shadow temples organized in sheds and basements,” Alb said. “We must move slowly, especially since there are exalteds of Gavd who speak against allowing the outsiders to return. I had not thought a follower if Gavd capable of unprovoked violence, but the times are violent and Kowri are reacting in kind.”

Regi traded concerned looks with Dante. She seemed to imply that they couldn’t trust any follower of Gavd, not even the great gods’ exalteds. The thought inspired fear. “Individuals chosen by the god himself would not carry such heresy, would that?”

She sighed, her voice small as she answered, “I do not know. I fear, and that is enough to make me want to walk quietly. But I am an exalted of Oba, and I know the stories of many Kowri. I will use that knowledge to call those who are more favorable to our cause. However, others could reach you more easily were you not in such a narrow place. I am worried that if you continue to follow the path of the dry river, there are many places where a loose boulder could pose a danger or an unscrupulous Kowri could make a pair of deaths appear to be an accident of chance.”

Regi’s blood ran cold. He had faced many enemies in his years of fighting on Coalition ships. He had been present for the Veron Station Riots. He had boarded pirate ships and smugglers. He’d been in gun battles. But he had never thought to fear the duplicitousness of Kowri. However, Alb’s words were logical. “What do you suggest?”

“Turn east out of that riverbed as soon as you can. You will soon reach the Temple path that leads to the rear of the cold season temple. Follow that path in, and I will find trustworthy followers of Gavd who I can trust. But you must turn off your communicator so others cannot track you. I have watched the network looking for you, and I hope my goddess guided me to see your signal before our enemies can locate you, but we cannot trust the gods to act when we are their hands. So turn off your communicator and trust that I will send you what help I can. Stay to the cold-season path and move closer to town, and I will handle the rest. Now take yourself off the communication network before the gods bless you beyond your ability to survive.” She disconnected.

With his heart pounding and a sense of urgency, Regi pulled the back office communicator and hit the switch to disable it.

“I guess we’re walking,” Dante said with a calm weariness that didn’t seem to match the direness of the situation.

Regi sighed and considered the steep eastern bank of the riverbed. They would have to search out a place they could climb. “I guess we are,” he agreed. Neither had any other choice. So they would walk and they would seek out the temple path, and when they got back to town, Regi was going to shove Siger’s face into pebafri excrement. Even though he was a security officer, Regi had never considered himself violent. He was reconsidering that judgment now.

With a sigh, Dante began to walk, Peaches chittering her complaints as she clung to his shirt.