Majgen Ch. 012

"Sshh, child," Weissme said and reached towards her empathically, he entered her mind gently and started to sedate her.

"You are safe now, go to sleep."

"Death is not safe, some of the children eat the dead," Majgen protested in that strange voice, while laying herself down on her side, closing her eyes. "I don't eat the dead, raw meat is disgusting!" she commented and fell asleep.

Weissme covered his student with her blanket and sat down next to her on her bed.

'She wet her bed,' he realised when the scent of urine reached his nostrils,'I should do something about it, so she doesn't have to wake up to the smell of her own piss. Poor child.'

He reached his hand out and caressed the young woman's arm through her blanket.

"I love you, dad," Majgen said in her sleep. Her voice sounded nearly like her own, now that she was sleeping.

"I love you too," Weissme responded automatically, same as he had always done when his kids had said they loved him. When saying it to Majgen now, he hadn't really meant it, yet the association broke through the last shred of distance -- which he had always tried to maintain -- to the younger empath.

The honest fatherly care for Majgen, which he had tried to deny and repress for more than five years, broke through to the surface of his being.

His artificial bubble of professional distance burst.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he said to the sleeping student. His chest clenched in agony of compassion for her hardships. Sitting there on the bed -- where the young woman slept a deep mind control induced sleep -- Weissme began to weep, sobbing his abony out next to a young woman, who -- by his hand -- had several broken ribs.

His tears caused his nose to clog, mercifully saving him from the slight scent of urine.

'I really need to clean her, and her bed. She shouldn't have to wake up to that mess,' Weissme thought again, when his sobbing passed.

He rose from the bed and pulled Majgen's cover off. However, the body under the cover wasn't that of a child, that much was obvious since she only wore her underwear. The sight didn't wake sexual feelings in him, his sentiments towards his student were not of that nature, but it made him remember how shy Majgen was about her body.

'She won't appreciate if I touch her naked body, not even for the innocent purpose of cleaning her.' Weissme covered her with the blanket again.'I can't wash her and change her underwear without seeing or touching her.'

Weissme tried to think up a solution, he had a headache from crying, he was out of practice with shedding tears.

'I need someone to do it for me. Who can I call? Delk? No, not Delk. She doesn't like him either, and, frankly, she has had too many men touching her without permission. Too many, too violently, and at too young an age. I need a woman for the task.' Weissme went through his options, and realised: There were plenty he could order to do it, but only one woman he would want to do it - and that 'one' he could not order around.

He checked his student was fast asleep, and gave her mind a nudge into a deeper unconscious to ensure she wouldn't wake up while alone. Then he left her room, and went to his study where he called a person, whom he hadn't called for years.

Weissme waited patiently for the call to be accepted, it was in the middle of the night. He redialed when the call timed out. On the third redial the call was taken.

"What?" a sleep hoarse female voice said on the other end, she had only opened the connection for sound.

"Greetings, Lonni," Weissme said.

There was a second's silence in the other end.

"Antwoine?"

"Yes, it's me."

"Why are you calling in the middle of the night?" She sounded puzzled and consternated at once, then her voice changed to concern. "Has something happened to one of our children?"

"No, our children are fine," Weissme said, but then corrected himself, "I mean as far as I know the children are fine, I haven't heard from them in years."

"What's going on then? Why did you call me?" She sounded sleepy and puzzled now.

"I need your help, Lonni." His explanation was followed by silence, he waited a while then he spoke on.

"Something has happened, and I really need your help Lonni. Will you come over, please?"

"No," she replied, sounding tired and determined, "it's the middle of the night, I haven't heard from you in years. We have grandchildren whom you have never even seen. You don't even try to reconcile with our children. No, I won't come over."

"I really need your help, Lonni," he said.

He didn't sound like a man in need, he sounded like a calm, dignified yet somewhat friendly Ottearon. Lonni Weissme still remembered that tone, even though it had been more than five years since she had heard it last.

"I said: No!"

"Please turn visual on, Lonni."

"Go dump your head in the toilet and have a nice long drink up, Antwoine. While you're there try to flush yourself out, that really would make the universe a better place."

"Maybe I will follow your advice later, my Dear. Right now, however..."

"I'm not 'your Dear'. I'm hanging up on you. Goodnight."

As soon as his former wife closed the connection, Weissme redialed, and waited for her to pick up again. Instead he got a recorded voice.

"Your line has been blocked from calling this recipient."

He called from another line.

"Hello." It was Lonni's voice.

"Lonni, I..." The connection was closed before he could speak further.

He redialed only to find, she had blocked this line too. He called again from a third line, again she blocked the line as soon as he spoke. The same happened with the fourth, fifth, and sixth line. As soon as he called she hung up and blocked in-going calls from that line. At the seventh call she talked before blocking.

"Stop calling me!"

Eight, ninth and tenth call she didn't.

Weissme went to check that Majgen was still deeply unconscious. Finding she was, he immediately returned to the study to make the eleventh call.

"Hello."

"It's me again," Weissme said.

"Grief, how many lines do you have?"

"More than a hundred, and if you block all those it will only take me a few minutes to get a few hundred more."

"You leave me no choice, I will turn off my communicators," Lonni stated.

"No," Weissme countered, "you won't. One of our children might call you. You never turn off your communicators."

"Then I will block all other lines than theirs and go to bed."

"No, you won't," Weissme knew his former wife inside and out, "some things don't change. You wouldn't risk not getting their calls if they should call from a different line." He heard an exasperated sigh coming from her end of the line.

"What do you want?"

"I want you to come over, I need your help."

"We are not a couple anymore, we are not even friends nowadays. Why should I help you?" She didn't sound like someone about to give in, not by far.

"I will give you the holiday resort apartment, the one you wanted but didn't get when we split apart," Weissme promised.

"I don't want it anymore. I got my own now, one that doesn't contain memories of you. None of the luxuries in yours can make up for that difference."

"I will give you cash to buy a new luxurious one." Weissme was getting nervous, he had really hoped the apartment would do it.

"Go take a swim in space, a nice skin dip. Will do you good! Would do me good at least."

"Cash to buy ten," he offered.

"I don't want your money, Antwoine. I still got enough to cover my needs, and our children's if need be. Please just stay out of my life." Lonni was quiet a moment. "It has been a long time since I needed you, and back then you weren't there for me."

"There must be something you want?" Weissme said.

"Not anymore, Antwoine, not from you. You were a warm person once, now you are just a block of frozen shit, and I have no use for you."

"Please, Lonni, name a price, any price. I'm desperate." A tint of desperation was even beginning to show in his voice.

"So, after all these years of being a cold piece of yijejo dump, you've finally gone mad?" Lonni spoke the derogatory comment in the same tone as she had all her other insults, but Weissme's heart skipped a beat at the word yijejo. Without visual Lonnie couldn't see his reaction, and continued unabated, "It's not my problem, it really isn't."

"I'm sorry if I hurt you, Lonni, but..."

"If you hurt me?IF!" Lonni left no doubt about her fury at his word-choice, as she followed up with a long speech about what kind of rotten, fungus, covered, shit eating, piss drinking, limp-cocked, half-retarded, drug-addicted man, she would considerbetter at taking care of a family than Weissme.

Tears streamed down Weissme's cheeks. Not for himself, not even for his family. He had cried for them in the past, in secret, alone. Weissme cried because he knew how headstrong his former wife was; if she had made up her mind not to be bought, she couldn't be bought.

He cried for Majgen.

"I lied," Weissme admitted in desperation.

"What did you say?"

"I lied, Lonni. I lied about why I wouldn't mind-share with you anymore. I lied about why I wouldn't see my grandchildren. I lied about why I always went away when our children came to visit. I lied about why I was hardly ever home." Weissme's voice was cracking. "I knew you knew I was lying. I knew you were hurting, but I never stopped lying."

Weissme tried to regain his composed voice, before he continued.

"I deserve no more from you than what you say, but I beg you, Lonni. This is not about me, the person I need you to help is not like me."

Lonni Weissme turned visual on, her former husband had not been prepared for that. He stared at her ruffled, yanked out of bed, appearance for a few seconds, before remembering his own tear-streamed face.

He hurried to a drawer and took a towel out to wipe his face. He would have preferred not to blow his nose too in front of his former wife, but it was either that or presenting a dribbling nose. Depositing the towel in the towel dispenser, he set his face in its usual neutral-friendly folds.

Lonni, was one of the few people he couldn't fool with a good act on long range visual, but that wouldn't keep him from trying to hide his emotions.

"What was the truth, Antwoine."

"You already know, Lonni. You knew all along, you just couldn't get it confirmed."

"That I was able to guess on my own didn't seem to be enough, but I want to hear it from you."

"You were right about it all along, Lonni. Can't we just leave it at that?" Weissme begged, "It is too late to try to repair our relationship, what good can it do to talk about it now."

"You owe it to me, Antwoine. Tell me or we are done talking."

"Lonni please, I'll do anything. Anything other than this. Please don't make me talk about this."

Lonni raised her hand and moved it towards the communicator control panel. Antwoine Weissme assumed she was going to terminate the connection:

"Wait!"

She lowered her hand.

"Hawlun," Weissme whispered, "I lied about Hawlun."

Lonni sat absolutely still her face unmoving, apart from wetness filling her eyes. She was waiting for the man, who had once been her husband through twenty-three years, to continue.

"I told you I only did administrative work. That was a lie." Weissme closed his eyes he couldn't look into her eyes, while telling this.

"I... I lied because of what I saw there myself, and what I sensed from the orphans. I could never tell you these things. You must never understand, never know, never see, what it was like. Not you, Lonni. Not my beautiful, loving, wonderful, Lonni."

"You were at Hawlun itself?" Lonni asked.

Weissme nodded, an expression Lonni had never seen on her former husbands face formed there, and disappeared again before she could interpret it.

"I was on the first rescue teams. I... I was in Hawlun from that moment and until the evacuation of the surviving was complete," Weissme paused, "Please don't ask me to tell you what I saw there."

"Antwoine, poor man. You shouldn't have kept this from me, together we could have made things ok again. You should..." She was interrupted by a brutal voice she had never heard from Antwoine Weissme before.

"You don't understand, you could never understand. Not without being there, not without seeing the memories of one of those children. It could never have been ok. Never. And I don't want you to understand. I want you and our children, to be able to live on, without being tainted by what happened at Hawlun."

"Antwoine, I followed the news-broadcasts. I know what happened at Hawlun."

"Facts, numbers, some images of dead bodies. They didn't show it all, and even if all the footage had been released, you still wouldn't understand."

"They told things that the footage didn't show too, Antwoine. In the years after, I've seen eye-witness accounts told by Hawlun-orphans. I know what went on there. It was horrible, horrid beyond belief," her words merely caused Weissme to shake his head.

"More footage was released over the years," Lonni continued unabated, "it became common knowledge that empaths who had worked extensively with Hawlun-orphans became mentally sick themselves, and distanced themselves from their spouses."

"Did you see the single published footage, of a bloodied eleven year old chewing on a dead woman?" Weissme asked.

"Yes, it was horrifying, but I forced myself to watch it. In spite of your lies I knew you had been working with Hawlun-orphans. I wanted to understand what you were going through. I thought that maybe you had seen something like that."

"That footage wasnothing, there was never a day when such a sight was the worst we saw, while evacuating the children. Do you remember Seksaron Quarta?"

"Yes, I do. Oh no, Antwoine. Where you there when the wall collapsed on him?"

"There was no wall collapsing on Quarta, that was just another lie I told you. Quarta was with me from the start. He kept the same pace I did from the very start. Three days into the evacuation, we came across one of the cannibal kids.

"Not a cute apathetic one like the one you saw on the footage. That one was just mimicking, evil grief, the one you saw on footage had only made a few tooth-marks on the corpse. No. This one was one of the genuine little beast revertal, a human with the mind of a rabid dog, a seven year old boy, all teeth and growls. He had poked holes in his eyes, most likely with his fingers. Probably to escape the darkness.

"Quarta went to the boy and entered his mind. I guess he saw one too many Hawlun-memories. He picked up the boy, and then our old friend Quarta ran to a hole in the street and jumped in it. There was a two city-floor drop from that hole. What was later vacuumed up to be called 'Seksaron Quarta's earthly remains' could better be called 'Quarta and beast-boy'-soup."

Weissme stopped and took several fast breaths, he looked like an animal himself, Lonni was shocked. She had never seen this side of her husband.

"Lonni, the beautiful and untainted, do you want to know what I think about Quarta's jump? The honest truth?"

Lonni nodded, she didn't really, but she felt a need to. She needed to know what had cost her: her still living husband, her children: their still living father, and her grandchildren: their still living grandfather.

"I think Quarta did that boy a favour. I often wish I had had the guts to give my life to take one of the Hawlun-beast-revertals out of their misery."

"You are talking about human children, Antwoine, don't refer to them like that. It's wrong."

"Wrong. You have no idea how wrong they are, you have no idea what they are suffering every living second," Antwoine Weissme forced himself to stop the track he was about to go down.

"When I came home, I dared not mind share with you, because of the risk that I might accidentally share just a single short glimpse of Hawlun with you."

"What about our children, and grandchildren, why wouldn't you see them?" Lonni asked.

"Oh yes, that. That I will not explain. Not now, not ever. I love you too much for that, Lonni, and them too."

'And she could never understand, truly understand. What it meant to see, not just know, but see, that every adult in Hawlun had been killed. Every single one, not one was missed, the yijejos killed every single adult human there. More than a million adults, they killed them all, one by one. Sedate, bio-scan, kill. Only a few thousand yijejos entered Hawlun. How could I even explain what that math did to me?'

After Hawlun, every time Ottearon Weissme had seen his grown children - or his grandchildren - he imagined what would happen to them if the yijejos should invade their homes. He saw his grandchildren eating of his children's rotting corpses, or he saw his grandchildren alone in complete darkness. Screaming for the release of death.

"Lonni, for twenty-three years we were spouses, we were in love even longer than that. I need one favour from you, and then I promise I will stay out of your live again. Please, help me this once," he pleaded.

"What do you need?" she asked.

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Copyright of Nanna Marker (lit ID ellynei)

Feedback means so much to me, pats on the back gives strength and confidence. Criticism opens my eyes to things I had not realised myself, and helps me evolve my writing.

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Speaking of feedback, a personal message to one I cannot contact other ways than here in afterword:

Dear Anonymous in USA, who placed 'overdue comment' on Ch. 010.

Regarding the political reasons why Majgen was held back at rank 10, I thought I had explained that in Ch. 009 - subsection 'Potential', (and verified the explanation through the rest of 009). Was that the political aspect you were thinking of? It would be wonderful if you would contact me and tell me what is amiss on the politics side when reading 001-010 since I know the whole story myself, it is hard for me to see what I told well enough and what I didn't.

As for Majgen's sexuality and self-loathing: Yes it is my intention to resolve the questions raised about those too, but that will be slow.

As for early life problems yes, that was my intention too, in Ch. 011 and here in Ch. 012 the revelation has begun of the horrors of Hawlun.

Thank you for the feedback Anonymous in USA, I hope I will manage to retain your trust in the story. I am very happy you enjoyed all chapters one to ten, I hope you enjoyed eleven and twelve too, and hope you will enjoy the rest too.

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