Mare Inebrium Series

Sins of the Fathers

Dan L. Hollifield

A Tale of the Mare Inebrium

Trixie is in a playful mood, I thought. I'd naturally kept an eye on her since I'd come in. With looks like hers she could pass for an artist's model for one of those Renaissance painters. Max the bartender is her boyfriend, the lucky stiff, and he was the one Trixie was playing with this afternoon. She had been needling him, in a flirty way, for the last half hour- that I'd noticed, anyway. In between orders she'd pick at Max, both of them fighting giggles, and they'd try to think up toppers every time Trixie had to sashay off to deliver an order to one of the tables.

I'd gotten in off of a flight only two hours ago. I made my way straight to the Mare, even though it was the local equivalent of three AM, I knew it'd be open. For the first time I noticed, over the main door, a sign that read "Abandon Sobriety- Ye Who Enter Here"- strange I hadn't seen it before. As I made my way to the bar I noticed a few of the semi-regulars, the Kanank-eduin fertilizer salesman I'd met- named Talla-quin-tuin, the Halazed Ambassador Hnarcor Finivalda- that lizard seemed to have a snootful already, and one odd fellow I'd seen twice before. He was sitting... or rather, parked- near the left end of the main bar. I say he was odd even for the Mare because he looked like nothing more than an aquarium in a wheelchair. An aquarium filled with differently colored layers of water- well, liquid anyway -with a bright blue gelid mass floating in the center of the aquarium. The wheelchair was about a meter and a half high and had several mechanical limbs as well as wheels. I assumed that he was a customer because I saw Max put a drink in front of him as I sat down. Besides them, I didn't see anyone I recognized right away. There was a trio of small, feathered fellows at a table near the center of the room. One was wearing a sailor's cap and seemed to have a speech impediment, one had a smoldering cigar jammed into the corner of his beak, and the other had darker feathers and seemed to be the practical joker of the group. They were playing a card game of some kind. Just the usual crowd for a late night. There must have been somewhere close to a hundred customers there in the main bar.

Personally, I was hoping that Kazsh-ak Teir would be in, but Max had told me that he was back home in the D'rrish city attending the christening of his newest grandchildren. It seems that several months ago his third- oldest daughter had fallen in love with a human, gotten a small tissue sample from him, then gone home to find a suitable D'rrish male to gene-splice the human's DNA with- in order to give birth to a double-dozen little D'rrishes. When a D'rrish female falls in love, she has to mate, and soon, or suffer some drastic biological trauma. I never knew how or why the DNA of an alien was important- I guess that they were mentally evolved enough to see all intelligent life as people, no matter what the species. How a giant scorpion's genes can be spliced with an Earth- human's is an exercise I'd best leave to the philosophers and scientists. Me? I'm just a traveling salesman. I was just about to ask Max for another drink when Trixie waltzed up and started in on him again.

"How many ex-wives is it that you're supporting now, Max?"

"Fewer than I've got the right to, but more than most folks could afford."

"On your salary? You forget that I know what you make."

"Yes, and I remember how beautifully you make too," he said with a grin.

"Flatterer..." she smiled. "Don't change the subject. I want to know how you manage to support- What is it? Sixteen? Seventeen ex-wives... ex-somethings anyway, and still manage to afford to tomcat about the place like a lord?"

"I owe it all to clean living," he grinned. "Of course it helps that I left some of them widows- with a trust fund set aside." He paused, mixed a cocktail, and handed it to her with a slight bow. "That and the fact that half of the rest are still being supported by their husbands. Your order, Mrs. McGuffin."

"Cad, womanizer, you beast- Thank you. Argyle Twist with zimafruit and two sparkers for table twenty-two, on the money. Back soon- Kiss kiss, you homewrecker."

"You two having fun?" I asked Max while Trixie was gone.

"She's in a mood," he sighed. "Its fun, though. I like her like this, she shows her best. Class, clean through. She's giving it to me like some Grand Duchess at high tea- you've noticed, I see."

I nodded.

"Cute, isn't it?"

"Terribly. Cheers..." I said as I swirled the ice in my empty glass.

"Another?"

"Sure, got nothing but time. Nowhere to be 'til tomorrow night."

"Meeting? Or another flight out?"

"Meeting, more's the pity. A flight out'd be less of a circus, fewer carnivorous beasts anyway."

"All of them sharpening their claws and waiting for you to trip, eh?"

Trixie flounced back with an order for table seventeen and another for booth nine. Max got busy with the orders. I thought then that there would be nothing any more remarkable than the wiggle in Trixie's walk to think about that night. I couldn't have been more wrong.

I was halfway through my fifth drink and thinking that I soon would need to take a sobriety pill and head for home- when I happened to glance over to my right at the hallway that leads to Max's little office. I sat as if nailed to my barstool- as I watched a section of the wall turn dark blue and shape itself into a door. The door opened and the Reever came through it. The Reever- nearly two meters tall and sudden death on two legs. The highest ranking cop on the planet, Ambassador of the Immortals of Bethdish, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound- for all I know. What's more, he looked angry. Funny, I thought. I never knew he could walk through walls. I tried to look casual, but that's kind of hard to do with your mouth hanging open. Trixie looked at me and giggled, then looked where I was looking, saw the Reever and gave a little gasp. The door closed by itself and faded back into the normal silvery-beige color of the rest of the walls as if nothing odd had happened.

The Reever strode to the bar- looking almost normal in some kind of dress uniform of silvery-gray cloth, knee- high boots, and a cape of darker gray material. I could see a massive handgun strapped to his right thigh, while the hilt of a short sword peeked out from behind his back... underneath his cape and hanging hilt-downward. He moved as if he were a well-oiled machine- like a predatory animal measuring his territory -stood at the bar and in a quiet, gravelly voice, ordered a tall glass of the oldest Krupnick on the shelves. Max solemnly turned around and picked up a dusty bottle, wiped it off, and poured at least five ounces of amber liquid into a seven ounce glass- adding three ice cubes as he turned back around.

"From the owner's private stock," said Max. "Laid down seven thousand years ago, on Earth... if you can believe the label." When he handed it to the Reever the drink steamed as if the ice had been kept at a temperature somewhere damned close to absolute zero. I watched the Reever drink at least half of it as the glass frosted over in his hand.

"Trouble?" Max asked casually- too casually. I gave up on any idea of going home until I could find out more. I knew that I'd just watched the Reever drink more liquor in a single gulp than I'd witnessed him put away in the last eight times I'd seen him here. Something was up- something bad. Momentarily I wondered if I ought to phone my broker and have him sell all the stock in my portfolio... then decided that if the world was about to end, having extra money on hand wouldn't save my butt anyway.

"Funeral," said the Reever as he put his glass down.

"Another one?" asked Max as if he were shocked. "Who? How?"

"Karelentor," replied the Reever. "Murdered. Sliced up like a lab rat. One of my staff officers was called when a body was found. Gene-typing gave us the identity."

"That's the third one in the last two years," said Max as if in shock.

"Fifth," corrected the Reever. "I've kept the others quiet so as not to spook the killer. I want that bastard so bad I can taste it. I'm going to bring him in- no matter how long it takes."

"No doubt. Anything I can do to help?" asked Max.

"No, but I was told to ask if you'd be a pallbearer for the poor sod. He mentioned you in his will- requested you by name."

"I'd be honored," replied Max. "Old Karel was one of my teachers at the Academy. But remember, anything I can do to help catch this creep, just let me know."

"Thanks. I'm sorry to come in out of nowhere like this but I was just consulting the Mare's owner about the killings and he let me take a short-cut from his place to get here."

"The owner?" I gasped.

"Mr. Polios," said the Reever while eying me as if I had just crawled out from under a particularly filthy rock.

"Reever, meet Andrew Huntington-Smythe of Antares Four, one of our regulars. He's OK," said Max generously. "Andrew's been coming here for years. He won't talk. Matter of fact, he helped me out once when some dim-witted inventor left one of his toys behind."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence Max," I said. At least my reputation was good for something.

"Polios?" said Max to the Reever, who was still looking at me like I was some type of lower life form. OK, maybe to someone divinely created by a pantheon of living gods I am a lower life form, but its still rude to point it out. "That's a new one. Sounds like he's been reading ancient Greek plays again."

"It means 'gray'," said Trixie. "At least in Greek it does."

"Makes sense, Gray he is. She majored in old Earth languages," Max said in reply to the Reever's raised eyebrow.

"She's very quick," said the Reever.

"Not when it counts," said Max as he smiled at her. "Your order, Mrs. Grundy." She smiled back, stuck out her tongue at him, and carried off another tray of drinks.

"Flatterer," she said over her shoulder as she left.

"She knows, then?" asked the Reever.

"Yes, but she thinks that its 'cute' and doesn't make a fuss when duty calls me."

"Good woman," replied the Reever as the three of us watched her walk away. "Better nail her down while you still can."

"As often as possible," quipped Max. "I still have carpet burns from the last time- But she prefers handcuff to nails."

The Reever just raised his eyes to the heavens as if to ask for deliverance.

I decided not to ask about the phantom door- seeing as how I had just missed being asked to mind my own business the last time I piped up. I wanted to know more about what was going on and being told to keep my nose out of it or get said organ stuffed full of lint wouldn't enlighten me at all.

"Any clues to the killer?" I asked instead when I could tear my eyes away from the back of Trixie's skirt.

"A few, but none quite good enough to locate him... If it is a 'him'," said the Reever.

"You think it could be the Black Snake, don't you?" said Max.

"I know that she's capable of such a thing," said the Reever. "But I don't see how she could benefit from the killings so far. None of the victims have been anyone of importance. None of them have had anything in common- except that they were in City of Lights at the time they were murdered."

That seemed to be a conversation stopper 'cause we all fell silent for several moments. Until Trixie came back and set us straight, matter of fact. She strode up, looked at our long faces, and burst out laughing.

"You three look like the three monkeys- See no evil, hear no evil, have no fun," she said. "If you can't think of the solution to your problem, think of something else. That's what Blanche always says. 'Maybe the solution will come at you sideways while you're not looking for it. Then all you gotta do is reach out and grab it.' It works for me."

"Right now, I'll try anything," said the Reever. "I'll catch this killer, no matter how long it takes!"

Right about then my well-oiled mind finally percolated out an important observation that I'd overlooked. "Wait a minute," I said. "If Max has to go to an Immortal's funeral-one of his former teachers, no less... then Max almost has to be-"

"An Immortal himself?" Max asked quietly. "Welcome to a wider universe, my friend. Yeah, I'm an Immortal- but I don't advertise it. I've spent the last couple of hundred years behind this bar, doing a job. I expect I'll still be here when the city is a crumbling ruin, and that's not going to be anytime soon."

"Too weird," I sighed. "OK, mum's the word from me. But you said that Trixie knew and wasn't jealous. What's that about? Certainly not bar tending. You mean you really have seventeen ex-wives? Being an Immortal, you'd have time for it, but..."

"Max left his other job unspoken," said the Reever. "A very important job, and one not connected to the bar. You've stumbled into a secret, but no one would ever believe you if you told it. Max trusts you- that, I can see. Trixie seems to like you as well. That speaks highly of you, for children like her often have the truer instincts."

The Reever paused in thought and my mind percolated out another fact for me to reflect upon; this guy's age was measured in the millions of years. If he thought of Trixie at age twenty seven as a child, didn't he have the right to think of all of us that way?

"You see," the Reever continued as if he'd made up his mind on something. "Max is our emissary to humanity."

"You mean he's a diplomat?"

"No, more like an undercover agent-" Max began to grin as the Reever spoke. "A medical agent at that. The High Council of the Immortals decided long ago that the natives on Bethdish were suffering from a debilitating disease. We had a possible cure for it millions of years ago, but how to administer it morally? Max is the result of the debate over those morals. He is to bring a slow, sure cure for the disease- as naturally as possible. He's been at it for over one and a half million years- I expect it will take a million or so more. With the discovery of Bethdish by Earth-humans and the staggering knowledge that the Terrans were nearly genetic twins of the natives of Bethdish- Max's duties were expanded to include Terrans in the cure."

"But that's impossible! Evolution doesn't work that way- there's no way that the natives of any two different planets in the universe can be identical! Not even if they were in the same solar system. Look around you, the folks here at the Mare are the best argument for genetic diversity among lifeforms that I've ever seen." Without rising from my seat, I could see the wild variety of sentient lifeforms from seventy planets- no two alike. I wondered for a moment how the Mare could handle the requirements of so many, but the Reever continued with his explanation and I lost track of that thought.

"Exactly, but yet they are almost identical nonetheless. A staggering discovery, one that demanded explanation. We Immortals came to the conclusion that the beings that created Bethdish must have visited Earth beforehand. Or came from there."

"Created Bethdish?"

"Well, perhaps they chose a planet at random and created all the life upon it. They've never said. Sort of 'forced evolution' rather than letting nature take it's course."

"You're talking about your gods here, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"But how could your gods have come from Earth? I don't understand."

"Perhaps they only visited there. They will not say. Obviously, there has to be a connection- otherwise the similarities could not exist."

My mind seemed to be getting more than it's fair share of boggle factor tonight. I paused in thought, trying to get back to the other thread of conversation. Finally, I remembered. "And the disease? You've been very careful not to name it. It must be something terrible-"

"Something terrible indeed," the Reever paused, looking sad. "The disease is old age."

I damn near choked on my drink as I tried not to spit it out all over the bar. "What?" I sputtered finally. Showed off my fearsome intellect, too.

"Roughly two million years ago... Max was genetically engineered to breed added longevity into the human race- races, as it turns out," said the Reever carefully- as if waiting to see how I'd take the news.

"He's soooo good at it, too." sighed Trixie contentedly as she eased onto a barstool at my side. This finally sank in- I was stunned into silence. I groped in my pocket for my Inter-Banque card, waived it in front of Max for a moment, and finally managed to speak.

"Bartender," I gasped. "I'd like a double of the oldest, most genuine Irish Whiskey that my credit balance can purchase."

"Certainly sir," said Max. "Would you like a chaser to go with that?"

After gulping at least half of my drink in one swallow, I managed to sputter out something lame about it being nice work if you can get it and proceeded to take three swallows to empty my glass. As I asked for a refill, I noticed that I was suddenly cold sober. After a soothing sip on my fresh drink I asked Max, "Are you going to explain this?"

"My job?"

"Yes, all of it. Including the why, if you don't mind."

"Alright. Before I was born, the Immortals saw that the natives were evolving to resemble themselves- but lived only a few hundred years at most. After much debate, it was decided to implement a slow, genetic solution to giving the mortals longer lifespans. I was conceived in a lab, my genes tampered with in order to be able to breed with the non immortal natives of Bethdish and pass on the particular gene-sequence that confers longer lives to my... descendants. Its a slow process, they won't notice anything for another half a million years. By then, the gene will be widespread enough and the humans stable enough for lifespans of thousands of years to be possible. Eventually, the High Council believes that the human lifespan will peak at a million years or so- before the final, quick onset of old age and death. The carefully-spliced genes I carry confer greater disease resistance, greater cellular repair ability, and better health in general- as well as longevity. My mission is to improve the human species and give them time they need to make the most of their abilities. There is nothing that they cannot do, if we can give them enough time." Max shrugged, "Like you said- 'Nice work if you can get it...' Well, I got it."

"And how!" sighed Trixie. "You've got it good, Babe! And I just love the way it looks on you. Manterene fizz and two Benarchaes on dry ice for table twelve."

"Trixie," I gasped. "You approve of all this?"

"What's to gripe about? My children, when I choose to have them with Max, will live longer lives. Their children may live even longer. Max is a gentleman, he treats me the way I want to be treated..."

"And when you're dust in your grave, he'll still be out 'tom-cattin', as you called it. And you're Okay with that?" Then, looking at the Reever I said something like "And your government thinks of this a moral behavior? Genetic tampering? What happens when Bethdish or Earth produces a dictator that lives forever? What kind of damage will he do?"

"That's one of the reasons why the Council decided to use this slowest method-" Max said gently. "To give humans time to evolve socially before the added lifespans become apparent and affect their thinking. Hundreds of generations will come and go before any impact is felt. At first the change will only affect a few- they will live an extra century or so in good health. They will be able to add to human knowledge, but slowly. Gradually, the genes will diffuse into the entire species. The High Council has considered the problem very carefully and decided that this method does the least harm."

"The ends justify the means? Is that what you're saying?"

"Not at all, but the benefits outweigh the dangers."

"Yeah, right. But I still see the dictator-eternal looming on the horizon. What are you going to do about that?"

"The Reever will be there," said Trixie. "He'll sort things out."

"'Protect the innocent', that's my job," said the Reever firmly. "Now and forever..."

"Max always sees that the children and his... wives... are cared for as long as they live," said Trixie. "There's no danger or hardship in store for them. I trust Max, he's a family man- at the core."

"Mrs. Peel, you are needed," said Max as he noticed a plumed Maldoerian waving it's empty tankard in the air. Kind of hard to miss seeing a Maldoerian anyway, since they're usually two and a half meters tall and bright orange. This one had its cranial plumes dyed a delicate shade of blue at the tips- and not one of those cheap dye jobs either. I guessed that it was a debutante. It was sitting with a pair of Candulax in one of the booths nearby. Must be a mated pair, the Candulax I mean. You almost never see a lone Candulax- they're uncomfortable when they don't have mates nearby.

"Thanks, playboy. Back soon," Trixie cooed as she glided off to take the Maldoerian's order.

"What's with the names, Max?" I asked. "I thought that Trixie's last name was..."

"Oh, just part of the game," Max replied quickly. "When she first found out about my- assignment, she started using different names for me while we were- uh, well..."

"In the heat of passion?" Said the Reever, grinning at Max's discomfort.

"Right. Well, it just sort of grew from there. I figure that if she likes it, what's the big deal? I can take a lot of kidding- especially if it makes her happy. So I started doing the same sort of thing in return."

"Another Dendril and soda for the big bird," sighed Trixie as she returned. "Have you seen Bert tonight? I think he could pick up a fare from that table. Someone is going to have to drive that Maldoerian home soon anyway. I bet that the poor dear is going to pass out before too much longer."

About that time, I noticed that Max was getting the eye from some pretty girls- Terrans, from the look of them -sitting near the center of the front row of tables. I muttered something about "animal magnetism" and finished my drink. Max grinned and offered me another.

"No thanks," I said. "I've still got that meeting to go to tomorrow. I'd better shove off. Duty calls." I nodded to the Reever, "Good luck catching your killer." Somehow I got unsteadily to my feet and headed towards the door. Just as I reached the doorway, I looked back at the bar. One of the Terran girls had gone up and taken the seat I'd just left. She seemed to be chatting Max up. I caught Trixie's eye as she made her rounds. She grinned at me, nodded towards Max and the girl, and shook her head humorously. That Trixie is one hell of a woman.

"Duty calls," I laughed to myself as I opened the door. Nice work if you can get it, I thought as I stepped out into the morning light.

THE END

Bio: Dan Hollifield, Aphelion's Senior Editor and Publisher, was born in 1957 at almost the same moment that Sputnik II was launched. This seems to have warped his point of view in the fact that he has always been rather a nut on the subject of spaceflight. A life-long SF and F reader, he began scribbling stories for his own amusement and for schoolwork back in the 1960s. His oldest surviving work, carefully preserved by his Mother, is a two-act play about four children finding hidden treasure in a haunted house. He began composing his first attempt at a SF novel in 1987. This manuscript led directly to his "World of Bethdish" short stories and novellas, his "Collector's Museum" series of stories, and the "Mare Inebrium" shared universe series. After having been drug online, kicking and screaming, in 1995 by noted Filksinger and Web-Guru Robert Wynne, he joined Dragon's Lair Webzine as a frequent contributor and later as Assistant Editor. His first e-published story was a Horror short in Dragon's Lair. His fiction has been published in Dragon's Lair Webzine, Titan Webzine, Steel Caves, The Writer's Club, and Aphelion Webzine. He lives with his wife in a tiny brick house near his parent's farm in the howling wilderness that is rural Madison County, Northeast of Athens, Ga. USA. He is an avid collector of firearms, swords, knives, books, and music- both vinyl records and CDs. An amateur musician, he also composes music, lyrics, and Filk as well as having been an artist all his life. One of his oil paintings, done on commission for a local fan, is soon to be featured in a book on Elvis Presley Fan-Art that will be published in England.

E-mail: vila at america dot net

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