Lineage - A Novel

Chapter 1

Manhattan

March, 2001CE

"I don't know. 'To. Flaming red hair, broad shoulders, strong arms. I think you're in trouble, little fikin"

Julia Merro, his cousin, leaned over the boardroom table and looked closely at Oto Berenson, searching for an insight, a Bakkta, into his thoughts.

"Don't do that, Julia, it isn’t polite"

"You don't want me to make you squirm, 'To?"

"I don’t want you to pry. Right now, I'd like you to show Kayley in".

As she turned to leave the boardroom, Julia retorted "Kayley. What a nice first  name. You always made friends easily, 'To".

"We met for coffee last week". She snorted and left.

While Julia was out of the room, Oto turned in his leather chair and looked out over the Manhattan skyline towards Fort Lee. Julia was right, of course. He was showing far more interest in Kayley August than he would in any other newman. And Julia saw this, too. She was sharp, and they were close, they had bred a child together.

But, that hair, that colour, the deep-set, piercing eyes that set Kayley apart from other newmen. He had never seen these genetic traits assembled so tightly in one who was not Beren. She had Beren blood, that was certain. Even her name announced this. How far back in her family history, though? This was key.

Oto went to the sideboard and filled a crystal jug with fresh water and ice, placing it and a fresh crystal glass carefully in front of the place he intended Kayley to sit. He considered a moment, then poured some ice and water in the glass, rendering it even more irresistable.

The door at the end of the conference room slid back quietly and Julia entered.

"Ms. August is here to see you, Mr. Berenson".

"Thank you, Julia. Would you mind staying for this? Ms. August, this is my confidential assistant, Julia Merro. I hope you don't mind if she stays for our meeting?"

"No, Mr. Berenson, that's fine".

Kayley August was exactly as described by Julia. Tall for a female, in her mid-thirties, strongly built in a tight-knit way, flaming curly red hair streaming down her back and escaping in wild tendrils from the barettes she had imprisoned it in. Her skin was that fair, creamy ivory seen only in true redheads, and it was liberally sprinkled with freckles. She had an alert, almost piercing glance, and bright blue deep set eyes.

In fact, it was only these blue eyes which distinguished her from Oto himself. If not for the fact that his eyes were a deep rich brown, the casual observer would have said they were twins. In fact, Oto and Kayley, completely unrelated by blood, looked far more like family than Oto and Julia, with her sandy reddish hair and her slimmer build.

Oto showed Kayley to the chair in front of the water jug, just to his left. Julia sat at his right.

"For Julia's benefit, I'm going to recap our conversations to date, if you don't mind, Kayley".

"Ms. August is Vice President at Caldwell PLC, the institutional realtors and property managers. She has brought an interesting opportunity to my attention. The State of Pennsylvania is contemplating privatizing its motor vehicle bureaus, including driver testing and licensing services. This is not yet common knowledge. Kayley knows about it because her firm has been approached to lend assistance in evaluating existing motor vehicle properties and leases. Technically, by sharing this information with us, she is in breach of confidence, but I think we can forgive her this minor slip". Oto smiled.

"Ms. August has some connections in the state employees union. These are the people most likely to be affected by a privatization, and they obviously have a large stake in the outcome. There will be substantial interest in acquiring the motor vehicle bureaus from the private sector when the RFP is formally issued by the state, but it is unlikely that any of the private sector bidders will be interested in dealing with the employees union. In fact, it is probable that most private sector bids will be anchored on eliminating the union, in order to maximize profits. Pennsylvania state law, for the most part, allows this, with some safeguards. Therefore, it appears that the union will be the losers in this transaction"

Kayley took a sip from her glass of ice water. Oto watched her carefully.

"Kayley has pointed out to me that the state employees union has a strike fund worth about $120 million. This is, of course, untouchable except in cases of labour disputes, and is intended for the entire union, 90,000 people, not just the motor vehicle bureau employees. Nevertheless, it is a substantial piece of equity and, if necessary, collateral".

"Kayley has suggested that the Berenberg Bank join with Caldwell in a consortium to bid on the motor vehicle bureaus. The third party would be the state employee union. The bank provides financing, the union provides the trained workforce and employee goodwill, which is no small contribution, and Caldwell provides their expertise in property development and management. As Kayley points out, these motor vehicle offices, 50 of them, draw an average of 1500 visitors a day, and they would be ideal anchors for strip mall developments. It is Kayley's idea that revenues from ancillary retail could supplement, if not equal the revenues derived from the motor vehicle bureaus themselves, allowing the capital purchase costs to be paid off in half the time".

Julia asked "What are the capital purchase costs likely to be?"

Kayley spoke up. "We don't know, and we won't really know until the bid process is under way. The state of Pennsylvania doesn't use standard cost accounting procedures, and we don't know what they include as overhead or other budget items. We do know, however, that the system delivered $50 million in gross revenues from licence fees last year, on salaries and rents of about $35 million. Therefore, net revenues could be as much as $15 million a year".

"But probably less" said Julia.

"Possibly less, but any shortfall could be offset by retail revenues".

Julia looked skeptical. "What kind of retail?"

Kayley leaned forward. "Do you know how long it takes to get a licence now? An average of about one and a half hours per visit, more if you're taking a driving test. Wouldn't you go buy a coffee and a donut, a burger or a magazine if you had to sit there for an hour and a half?"

"If it were operated by the private sector, the wait times would have to be reduced. No one would stand for it" Julia pointed out.

"Yes, but if the bureaus are relocated in attractive retail locations, they'll drive a lot of other retail traffic. Believe me, I know this. It's my business"

Julia gave Kayley a close look. "I believe you".

Oto watched the two women with some amusement. "In any event, Kayley expects the initial capital investment would be paid off in four to five years if, as expected, the purchase price is between $50 and $60 million. It is likely the state will issue the RFP for a contract term of ten years. Thus, five to six years of operation is all profit. And the union strike fund guarantees our investment. It has the potential to be an attractive deal".

Julia turned to Kayley. "How certain are you the union will want to be involved? And that they'll want to pledge the strike fund?"

"Quite certain"

"I don't think so" said Julia. Oto watched Kayley.

"I beg your pardon?" Kayley asked.

"I don't think you're quite certain. Does the union want to be involved in the bid?"

"Yes, they've already discussed it with me".

"Alright. They want to be involved. Do they want to pledge the strike fund?"

"Yes, from what they told me".

"I don't think that's what they told you, is it?". Julia asked in a friendly way.

Kayley was looking a little lost. "Well, no, what was said was that they would invest a portion of their assets in pursuing a bid".

"Good. Pursuing a bid. Do they want to WIN the bid?"

"Of course, why else would they want to pursue it?"

"I can only go by what you tell me. I accept the union is interested in the bid, but there are many reasons to be interested which don't have anything to do with winning. Tell me, the Pennsylvania state employee union has a reputation for militancy, don't they?"

"Well yes, they are very active on their members' behalf" Julia said somewhat defensively.

"Is it possible they want to take part in this bid so that they can get access to confidential operating data, which they'd be able to use in future contract negotiations?"

Kayley was visibly surprised. "I… well, I don't know, I'm not privy to any of that".

'

"Let's say for argument's sake that this is a possibility"

Oto interjected. "Whatever their motives are at this point, a bid which included the union as a truly committed partner, with a real interest in winning the business, would be a very convincing bid indeed. It would avoid all sorts of unpleasantness during the transition phase. And if the union were committed enough to pledge a portion of the strike fund as collateral, not just for funding a fishing expedition, this would be a very easy bid to sell. Even to the Berenberg Bank".

Kayley brightened.

Oto continued. "You have brought forward a very interesting proposition, Kayley. I don't think it's complete yet. For one thing, I think you need to sell the union on becoming an enthusiastic and committed partner. Militant or not, they must understand that the organized labour movement in this country is under siege. By taking an ownership stake in the businesses where their members work, they have a much stronger hand to play in protecting their jobs than they do if they just take a confrontational stance. If you want to put it in their language, this is just another way of achieving Karl Marx's dream of putting the means of production in the hands of the workers. You're a good salesman, Kayley, I think you could make this case".

"Secondly, if the revenue stream is as good as you say it is, and if the retail opportunities are there, I don't think it will be necessary to pledge the strike fund as collateral. This should make your selling job easier. We can arrange mezzanine financing in which the capital costs are funded by the enhanced revenue stream. It means that we won't achieve profitability until year five or six, instead of year four or five, but it's an attractive proposition all the same".

"Third, the plan is missing one thing. Good management. If you'd like, I can put you in touch with one of our clients, a firm that specializes in third party management of public sector agencies. They do a lot of work in the defense and research industries".

Kayley demurred. "It was our intention to run the management through Caldwell, Otto…"

"Oto. With all due respect, Kayley, it's you I'm interested in, not Caldwell PLC. The Berenberg Bank makes its investment decisions based on individual, not corporate strengths. We wouldn't be interested unless one of our management partners were involved. Don't worry, I'm not trying to steal your deal, I'm just protecting the bank's interests. My secretary will be in touch with the name of someone you can talk to at ABB Management. After that, we'll talk again"

A tightness fell across Kayley's chest, a brief shortness of breath, and she found herself in the reception area, getting her coat.

This was very odd, because Kayley had an ironclad rule about sales meetings. The close, the substance of the meeting, always happened in the last minutes, when coats were being put on, and this was the moment she always prepared herself for, and choreographed as tightly as she could. She always left her coat at reception, and she always allowed her host to accompany her to the door to help her with it, so she could get in her final closing pitch.

This time, she couldn't even recall Oto leaving his office, didn't know if they had shaken hands or exchanged words, had no idea how the meeting had actually ended. It wasn't until she was waiting for her elevator that she realized she hadn't even thanked the receptionist, another ironclad rule of hers. She boarded the elevator, extremely puzzled and a little angry at herself for making so many little slips, and with the curious sensation of having had her head rummaged in like a sock drawer, she descended.

Oto closed the door behind Kayley.

"You really spake her good, 'To. Bokkt her right out of here. Wanted to get rid of her, did we?" said Julia.

"No, I wanted to stop you prying into her head. She's got enough on her mind, and she's not stupid".

"Why did you ask me to stay, then?"

"Because you're a better Bakkator than I am. And you did it very well, thank you. It didn't occur to me that the union might just want to get a look at the books for free".

"It's not a big stretch".

"No, but now she has a three point plan for actually putting this deal together in a way that will work. Sell the union on cooperating, forget the strike fund and bring in Altewerk. Under those conditions, I think we'll invest"

Julia looked at him with genuine surprise. "'To, this is a piddly $50 million deal. This isn't what you were sent to Manhattan to do. This doesn't  have the remotest connection to the Dikkta. It's completely off-plan, and it's a newman deal, too".

"Julia, we are an investment bank. To maintain the Ekkta, to preserve cover, we need to make deals. All sorts of deals, not just those driven by the Dikkta. This could be a good deal, and I think Kayley can make it work. Who knows, a thousand Beren may need Pennsylvania drivers licences overnight".

"It's not the deal you like, fikki-man, it's Kayley. You've got to watch out. She looks good, but she's not one of us, you know that. This is dangerous. What would the Beren say?"

"If I recall, my grandfather left a string of Beren halfbreeds across Europe when he was my age".

Julia snorted at him again. "Different times, ‘To. He was helping to rebuild a shattered population after the first war, you know that. He was acting under direction of the council".

"The Kalakkta just don't realize how shattered this population is, that's all. Gas costs rising for their SUVs, can't get a good table at Cirque 2000 for love or money. These newmen need my help".

"Help, my ass. You want to nail her knickers to your flagpole, that's all. Like I said, she may look good, but she's not a Beren, and that's going to cause trouble."

"Trouble I'm good at. It's you I can't handle. What's up?"

"We've sold the last building south of Chambers and west of Park Row. We own nothing within falling distance of the Trade Center"

"Is there a ritual for this?"

"Don't be childish, 'To, this will be grim beyond your experience"

"Do we know when yet?"

"All we know is after Eid 'el Fitr. But I don't think anything will happen this year"

"I was at a meeting there yesterday"

Julia crinkled her eyes at him "You should probably stop going there"

"I'm stronger knowing you care. Next, I want to move quickly on the Ramsaj. The bastard's going to get his export permit after all. It's time to put him out of business for good"

"There are plans being made right now. Traktor's assigning the task. I want you to stay out of this. Tukking isn't your job anymore. Speaking of what is your job, we moved up Wally Byrd's Bar Mitzvah to this afternoon. There was a rumour of church camp next week".

Oto squeezed his eyes shut as if at a bad memory.

"Traktor will pick you up at one. The Bar Mitzvah's in White Plains at 2:35".

"White Plains?"

"They moved. To be closer to the church"

Oto squeezed his eyes shut again, then asked "Will the Pukkta come?"

"Should she?"

"Can you ask her? I'll want a Makkator with us".

"I'll ask".

Oto watched her fondly as she left the conference room. He turned and, using a napkin, picked up the glass Kayley had drunk from. After emptying the water back into the jug, he carefully placed the glass in a Ziploc™ bag he took from a drawer. He put the bag in his Hermes satchel, picked it up and left the office.

Chapter 2

Manhattan

March, 2001CE

Kayley August had done her research thoroughly, as she usually did. Before approaching venture capitalists and investment banks with her half-finished deal, she had carefully set out her parameters.

She had needed a smaller bank, one that wouldn't be the subject of a lot of Wall Street chatter, and yet they had to be be extremely well-endowed (something she liked in all her partners). They should be owned off-shore, to ensure that state and federal politics would not interfere with the deal. And it should be a family bank, closely-held, where decisions were made by one person or a small group, and were implemented quickly.

The Berenberg Bank had fit all her needs best. Founded in Germany in the middle ages during the period of the Hanseatic League, it was the oldest bank in Europe. Wholly owned by the Beren family (or was it Berenson, there seemed to be some question), it was little known in in the US, but had a reputation, if any, for making somewhat offbeat investments in curious companies. It had strong ties to the defense and research establishments of Europe and was extremely well-endowed. Although its assets were unknown, being privately held, they were rumoured to be in excess of $100 billion.

While this seemed an enormous asset base, it WAS true that the Berenberg Bank was the prime financial partner behind the planned International Space Hotel project, and that would require truly huge amounts of capital, if it were ever to get off the ground.

The Berenberg Bank (North America) would be her target.

The FDIC website had provided her with some limited detail on the bank. Head office of the North America subsidiary located in Manhattan. Associations included the regular financial regulatory boards and some less obvious groups, like the Tri-Lateral Commission subcommittee on global finance. Most importantly, officers of the bank. Only one had been listed, Oto Berenson.

By consulting back issues of the FDIC register, she had learned that Oto had been posted to the bank in just the past year, to replace Wiktor Merro.

Names, again. Was the family that owned the bank called Beren or Berenson?  Why had she assumed that the name Oto was a misprint, and that his real name was Otto? What kind of a name was Oto anyway? And why did his assistant have the same last name as the former chairman of the bank?

No matter, her research had paid off. There aren't that many Berensons in the Manhattan phonebook, fewer still with the first initial 'O' and only one with a condo on Central Park West.

She had spent the best part of a week at the lobby of his condo, staked out between 6:30 AM and 9:30 AM. On the fifth day, at about 10 AM, her patience had been rewarded, and she had gotten the shock of a lifetime.

The doorman had said "Have a good day, Mr. Berenson" as he had handed a man into a taxi. The man had been no more than 25, and he could have been her twin.

He had been of medium height, very densely built and well-knit and had flaming red hair the exact colour of hers. The same skin, too, ivory-white with freckles, which would turn angry red in the sun.

She had seen real redheads before, had noted them with sympathetic interest because of the taunting she had gone through as a child for her flaming foliage. She had almost a proprietary interest in redheads and collected sightings of them like some people collected bird sightings.

She had briefly toyed with the idea of taking a red haired lover, but rejected the idea as dangerous, given what she knew of her own unbridled sexual appetites and unpredictable rages. Having a sexual relationship with a man like her would be like pouring gasoline on a fire, and he'd cheat for sure. After all, she would in his place, wouldn't she? No, brown haired men were better, blonds best. Peaceful, malleable and trusting. Just the way she liked them.

Oto Berenson was different. He was a flaming redhead, yes, and he had appeared to have that piercing look she recognized in herself, but he had been somehow more contained than any redhead she had met. More still, more centred.

She had looked directly at him as he closed the door of his cab. He had looked up, had seen her, and had appeared to start, as though he had wanted to say something. The cab took off up Central Park West.

Two days later, Kayley had sat in the main reception area at the Berenberg Bank head offices in midtown at 10 AM. Shortly after 10, the door from the elevator bank had opened and Oto had walked in. He had said "Good morning, Livia" to the receptionist and then saw Kayley. She had risen to greet him.

"Good morning, Mr. Berenson, we met briefly…"

"Outside my apartment Tuesday morning. Yes, I remember you. How could I not? Apparently you're here to tell me you're my long-lost sister".

"Well, not exactly…"

"But you wanted to talk to me, or you wouldn't have staked out my home, would you?"

This wasn't going as she had planned. He was far too sharp. Her banter didn't kick in the way it usually did.

"I actually wanted to speak to you about an investment opportunity…"

"Oh, business. I see. Not some terrible family secret? Some illicit liaison with an Irish chambermaid?"

"Well, not as far as I know, but my mother was a bit of a party girl, she tells me". This was better. Try and give as good as she got.

"Good. To talk business, you have to make an appointment with Livia here, Ms…?"

"August. Kayley August. I'm Vice President with…"

"That can wait for business. Livia, an appointment for Ms. August, please" Livia smirked at her computer screen. "I have next Wedneday the 18th at 9:30 AM" she said.

"Is that good for you, Kayley?" asked Oto.

"I'd have to…I think so, but let me check my book…"

"We'll check it over coffee. There's a Starbuck's downstairs where the staff is actually sullen. It's a treasure I don't tell anyone about. I'll be back in about half an hour, Livia. Now about your mother. How hard would you say she partied?…"

Livia had smirked again as Kayley and Oto had headed for the elevators.

That had been her first real encounter with Oto Berenson, and it had left her breathless, in a not-quite-unpleasant-but-disturbingly-unfamiliar way.

Which was almost exactly the way she felt today when she got out of the elevator after meeting with Oto and Julia. Except she had gotten the same piercing, not-quite-unpleasant-but-unfamiliar vibe from Julia as well, and Kayley was no lesbian, so it wasn't sexual attraction.

 It was…what? More intense than sex, deeper than a passing personal interest, more like, well, a religious revelation? While raised a catholic, Kayley was thoroughly lapsed and was, in fact, a pagan in her own small way. Was this what a pagan religious revelation might feel like? A bit tingly, with a band of light pressure around your head and the whiff of orgasm in the air? She decided that, yes, it might be, and for no other reason, she decided at that moment that Oto was a pagan, a warlock of some kind, and Julia was no doubt a witch.

That Oto and Julia had a sexual relationship seemed obvious to her, although couldn't recall any overt signs of this between them. It was something about the way they seemed to communicate without talking. Lovers did that sometimes. She was suddenly conscious of a completely irrational jealousy directed at Julia Merro, a woman she had just that moment met.

And Oto. Well, he was a redhead, yes, and they were dangerous. And he wore his sexuality in a confident, cocky sort of way that was guaranteed to get her hackles up, but was also guaranteed to get her interest. Was he worth being jealous about? Or becoming jealous about?

He spoke perfect English, with just the hint of a soft mitteleuropean burr, the way Germans sometimes sound like Scots and vice versa. She decided he was from Hamburg, where the Berenberg Bank International had its head offices. She also decided he'd gone to school in the US, probably Exeter or Choate followed by Harvard, judging by his Massachusetts inflections.

Kayley August often made completely unsupported leaps of intuition and judgement like this, backed by nothing more than the merest handful of facts, and she was right more often than not. She had had to learn to trust these "flashbulbs", but they served her well in business, giving her a reputation for confidential information sources and hard work which she didn't really deserve. It often came as a surprise to her that not everybody made these intuitive leaps of imagination.

Regroup. Oto Berenson. German by birth, well-educated at the best American schools. Fabulously wealthy and powerful. Good looking and young enough to be her pool boy.

Worth being jealous about? Absolutely! As for the red hair, it wasn't a deal-breaker, she could get used to it. Besides, he seemed to lack the edgy raw buzz of most redheaded males. Maybe they did them differently in Germany?

Alright. She was going to make this deal happen, and, along the way, she was going to get a taste of Oto Berenson to see if he went down as smoothly as he looked. Screw Julia if she got in the way.

The deal! In all her mental confusion since being ushered out of the conference room, she had completely forgotten the deal.

He'd liked the deal, hadn't he? No, the deal he had liked was the one he had outlined for her, without the strike fund, and with the management partner. As she concentrated on the details, her head started to clear.

How the hell did Julia know the union was only after a look at the books? And how the hell had she known they never intended to commit the strike fund. Clearly, Julia WAS a witch.

But Oto had also realized (obviously) that the strike fund was just a decorative embellishment to get his interest. And he wasn't interested. He had also somehow divined that Caldwell couldn't possibly manage the motor vehicle bureaus, and that the lack of a management partner was the biggest hole in her deal.

In fact, the two of them might have been looking right inside her head the whole time, for all the secrets she'd been able to keep. She prided herself on the close poker hand she played in business meetings, but she might as well have fanned her cards out on the table this time. Did she really want to do business with witches?

Well, maybe not the witch, but the next meeting would be with Oto alone, or she'd walk. She was determined to learn more about him, and the curious businesses of the Berenberg Bank (North America).

She hailed a cab and told the driver to take her to the Public Library.

Chapter 3

Manhattan

March, 2001CE

Precisely at 1 PM, a black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows drew up in front of the Berenberg Bank building. While Oto was happy to live a relatively unpretentious lifestyle in his $16 million suite on Central Park West, today he was traveling in state, for this was a formal state occasion.

The front passenger door opened and Oto climbed in, satchel in hand. He had changed into a darker suit than the one he had worn that morning, almost black, with a black tie and a crisp white shirt. The man behind the wheel was dressed in a similar fashion. Oto buckled in and said "Thanks, Traktor".

He leaned over the back of seat and looked in the back, where there was another young man in a black suit with flaming red hair just like Oto's. Next to him sat a tiny, ancient woman dressed in an elegantly tailored Chanel suit, also in black, edged with red satin.

Oto nodded at the young man, saying "Hello, Arktor". He made a little obeisance to the old lady.

"Pukkta. Harmony and balance to you in full measure". He used the formal "tokka"  form of "you"

"And to you, Berenson"

"Thank you for coming today, Pukkta"

"I was free. It is as well. Sak's is having the Silk Sale on the 25th, and I wouldn't have been able to come then. I am curious. Why did you ask me?"

"Pukkta, it's a difficult case, as you know…"

"I know it's your job to get him out of it. Those parents were a good genetic match for his temperment, and that's all I guarantee. They came from Kan Kisi's family, after all, the Merry Jokesters or whatever he called them. I had no idea they'd get religion." She shifted grumpily in the bolstered seat.

Oto reached into his satchel. "Pukkta, there's something else…"

He handed her the Ziploc™ bag with the glass in it.

"You've been wasting your time hunting redheads, haven't you?" she chuckled.

"Call it a hunch".

"Where did you find him?", asked the Greatmother.

Oto paused. "Her, actually, Pukkta"

She gave him a quick angry look. "What's the point, then?".

"Like I said. A hunch".

"That's too big a hunch for you, little Makin" she said sharply. She put the Ziploc™ bag in her black Kate Spade shoulder bag, then turned to look out the window as if she had lost interest. Outside, a black Audi A6 Quattro station wagon with tinted windows had taken up position on point, and a black GMC stretch Safari van with no windows had slipped in behind them.

Traktor stifled a snicker as Oto turned back to face front. Arktor leaned over to the Greatmother and said soothingly "It's a great honour to have you with us on the Bar Mitzvah, Pukkta."

"It's odd that you tuske call it a Bar Mitzvah. I would have thought a Briss was closer to the truth. We're stripping this young man of his cover, his Noktor, of all he knows so far, and we're not giving him much in return. Much like a circumcision". Arktor grimaced.

"Arktor", she cried. "You haven't been done, have you?" She laughed with delight.

Arktor looked sheepish. "I had to. I was outbred Jewish".

"Oh, show me!", she said, the delight evident.

Arktor unbuckled his belt and showed her.

"It seems like such an uncivilized thing for such a civilized people to do" she commented ruefully as Arktor buckled his pants again. ""I'm sorry to be thoughtless, dear Arktor. Please forgive me if I hurt your feelings. I didn't mean to. We're all managed by the Plan".

The three men murmured "Dikkt u Dikkta".

"No, Pukkta, I don't mind at all, it's my Taskkta. It's just that it hurt, and I remember it. Newmen don't remember it, so they don't think it's a big deal".

"Of course dear" she cooed, "the things we will always do".

The Tuske, the 'boys', tugged their forelocks in unison.

"What is our appointment. Bakin?" she asked Arktor. He was the Watcher, the Baktor, on this case.

"School's out at 2:30, unless he has study class, which he skips anyway. Unless something is off, he gets out of the building at about 2:45, after talking to his friends. The last two weeks, he's been going straight home across Whitfield Park, and along Tecumseh Parkway, where he stops for a chocolate fudgesicle"

"It's March!" interjected Oto.

"He really likes them. So do I, now. Anyway, we make the first pass in the park, on the bench near the fountains. The next pass, mother forbid, is at the Parkway side of the park, at the gate, and any third pass'll probably be at the corner store".

"Three passes?" the Greatmother asked incredulously.

"It's tough these days, Pukkta, very tough" said Arktor.

Traktor (who, as his name  taught, was the Driver on the team) chimed in "Neighbourhoods where we place are very picky about strangers talking to their children, Pukkta. They have neighbourhood watch, closed circuit cameras, patrols. We can never be sure nowadays if the initial pick up is going to go wrong. The reception hasn't changed, though".

"Well, thank goodness for that. I'll make the first pass. I'll show you how it's done." The Greatmother said firmly.

Oto and Traktor looked at each other. Arktor gazed at the Greatmother with frank adoration and veneration.

"Oh, Pukkta, would you? What a kicker!".

Oto spoke up. "I'll accompany you, Pukkta".

"Don't you worry about me, little Mikin. I can take care of myself". He knew she could, too. "I'll let you come along as my grandson".

"He is my uncle after all" said Oto.

"And what would that make me? Um, his aunt, I suppose. That's convenient".

"But Pukkta, you're not his aunt. Are you going to Ekkt this?"

"Don't be out of balance, Otin, As a matter of fact, I am an aunt of sorts. The Beren's sister is my half-sister on my mother's side. So be pakktin. We will unfold this little manka together"

Chapter 4

White Plains, NY

March, 2001CE

Walerius Byrd hated his name, obviously. That's the easiest thing to figure out about him. That he hated Wally even more is not that much harder to figure out. It requires a little more digging to figure out why he hated his parents so much.

Walerius (pronounced Valerius) was 12, and called himself Val. He wasn't a particularly difficult or rebellious 12 year old and his parents were really good people at heart, he knew that. They cared about him, they had supported everything he wanted to do in the way of hobbies and interests and they also gave him precious room to grow himself a bit without their constant supervision.

The problem was, they'd gotten religion. Not just Episcopalian or half decent urban Baptist, they'd gone whole-hog fundamentalist, rockin' and rollin', snake-handlin', fire-breathin' pentecostal. And they made it clear that, while they were willing to be patient with his conversion, they expected Val to come too. Val wanted nothing to do with it, and he sensed that this might become one of those truly awful things that split families for good, even families like his, which, up until recently, had been mostly happy and close-knit.

The awful thing was, he understood what had gotten into them. Life had just never lived up to the expectations they set for themselves. They were (truly) the perfect couple to raise children who would make a difference in a better world.

Both were from families involved in the communal movement of the early and mid-sixties, and both exemplified the best of good values, wise use and sustainability. They were successful (his father Robin was an ecological architect with a practice in zero impact buildings, and his mother Janis ran a small gynocentric press), they lived their values and they respected others. But they never had children, and this caused the balance to leave their lives.

That he was adopted was not in question. They had never told him, but he'd seen the file, in his father's safe in the office, which took him exactly six seconds to open, back when he was five years old. And neither of them exactly had flaming red hair, either.

He figured they had adopted him thinking this might spur them, as it does many couples, to have some children of their own, but it never happened.

They were devoted parents to Val, nonetheless. They found Dr. Wiktor for him to play chess with. He didn't need lessons, and they didn't approve of chess competitions, or any competitions, so he didn't get much playing time except with his father, which was worse than no playing time at all. They didn't mind, once he got his subway card, letting him go into Manhattan to play at the public tables in Washington Square, as long as Dr. Wiktor (oddly enough, pronounced Viktor) went too.

But what he wanted to do, and what he was fabulously good at (once again, truly) was video/player interface digital design, basically the art and craft behind the art and craft of designing video games. But Val didn't have time for video games, he was interested in new interfaces  between the game and the player. He was working on a program now that would allow a CRT display to change colours based on the player's emotional level - red for angry, blue for calm. Of all people, Dr. Wiktor seemed to be the only person who was remotely interested in it, and he was very interested indeed.

His parents were definitely not interested. They thought of videogaming as a waste of time. They hoped Val would develop an interest in medicine, research, social work, therapy, anything with intrinsic public value besides video game design. It was not to be.

It was about six months ago that something snapped. His father announced after dinner one night in Darien, "Let's go out and do something tonight. There's a family place some guys I know go to".

This was very odd, because Val's dad didn't know many guys, and none he'd go to a "family place" with.

The "family place" turned out to be a pentecostal church in a strip mall way the hell and gone out in White Plains, where the congregation looked just as stressed out as his dad, just not in the same income bracket.

The sermon (the whole service was a sermon, really, interrupted by major shaking) was against video games, as in really against, and Val learned just how deeply he was doomed for eternity.

It all made him sick. Deep down inside himself, he knew there was something humiliating about abasing the human spirit in front of claptrap and ignorance. And his father had brought him there. From that moment, he started to hate his parents. It didn't get better. He had to go with them twice a week, where he hung out in the back with some other teens. In January, they moved to White Plains to be nearer the church. White Plains was not Darien. His father sold his practice and began working at the church, while training as a preacher. His mother, the feminist, started talking about God's special plan for women, and how He loved them so much He had to take special care of them. It was dire.

He was twelve. He'd be thirteen next November. Five years and eight months until he was eighteen. Maybe they'd lower the age of majority between now and then. The thought was bleak comfort to Val.

Across the park, ahead of him, a little old lady sat on the bench by the drinking fountain. As he got closer, he realized just how little and old she really was. The word crone sprang to mind.

As he was passing the bench, the old lady addressed him. "Excuse me young man, could you help me?".

He stopped and walked over. "How can I help?".

"I'm looking for someone I’ve lost". Her voice was very firm for a tiny woman. He felt himself drawing closer, as if he was expected to.

"Who are you looking for?" He noticed a large black SUV parked at the edge of the park, with a man in a black suit talking into the driver's side window.

"I'm looking for you, Walerius". She pronounced the "v" properly, as no one but his parents and closest friends did.

Now something funny happened. This was definitely a creepy situation, with the creepy little old lady in her expensive shoes, the big black truck a hundred feet away with at least two men, maybe more. All the earmarks of a snatch job. But why all the muscle for a twelve year old? And for the first time, he realized he didn't feel scared at all. That this was all somehow appropriate, as though he'd been waiting for it for a long time.

He felt an unexplainable surge of joy. He could barely get the words out. "Why are you looking for me?"

The tiny old lady smiled at him, and it seemed like her eyes went right through his head. He started to feel a little short of breath.

"I'm your aunt. I'm here to tell you who you are".

"Are you going to take me away you?"

"I'm not going to do anything with you that you don't want me to do ".

"No, no, you don't understand".  He was getting unbearably excited, almost panting from the band that seemed to stretch across his chest. He didn't notice the man at the SUV start to run over to the bench. "I want you to take me with you, I want to go. Please don't leave me here with the god bunnies anymore!"

The young man arrived with no visible exertion. "What's going on, Grandmother?". Even in his excitement, Val couldn't help noticing the man's flaming red hair, just like his own.

"Walerius, this is Oto, your nephew. Otin, I think he's ready to come now".

"But Pukkta, he hasn't been…"

"He's ready, Oto. Come, Walerius, take my arm and help me back to the car. Do you want to bring that?". She pointed to the backpack he had dropped on the bench in his excitement.

Val looked at the backpack, with its Red Sox patch and Greenpeace logo. He took the little old lady's arm, the way a gentleman does. "No, that's alright. What's your name?"

They walked slowly over to the Cadillac. "You can call me Wiktoriana", she said.

Oto looked after the Greatmother and the boy leaning over her and smiled in wonderment. He had known the Pukkta all his life, and he had never heard her name.

The convoy headed sedately back to Manhattan, with a new passenger aboard.

Chapter 5

Manhattan

March, 2001CE

"You should have seen her" Oto exclaimed. "It was the quickest, cleanest Bar Mitzvah I've ever seen in my whole life!. I don't know what she said to him, but they couldn't have been talking for more than a minute. Then she tells me he's ready to come. No call-backs, no muster-out, no foreign trips, he's coming with us today!"

He laughed again and sat down at the conference table. "I wish she'd do all our Bar Mitzvahs".

Julia asked "Where is he now?"

"We took him straight to my place. Livia's with him to keep him company and answer the first questions. The big showdown is tonight, after dinner, when he'll be most receptive".

"You left Livia with him? Talk about a kunakin! She'll have him in bed before you get home".

"As long as she leaves him alone until after the showdown, I don't care what they do".

"Why do you insist in calling it a showdown, 'To? This is a Bar Mitzvah like any other. You've done lots of them".

"It's not like any other, Julia. This is happening all at once. No time for him to prepare himself, no visits to the library, no boning up on his anthropology. He's going to have to take it in all at once, and he has no fallback if he doesn't like what he learns. He can't go back to White Plains, they're already looking for him. He's stuck with it".

"How are you going to do it?"

"We're having dinner at my place at eight. The Pukkta is coming, and so is your father, which will be a surprise for Val, I imagine. Livia will be there, and Arktor, of course. I'd like it if you could come, too, so we balance males and females".

"Of course, Oto, I'd love to meet him. What's he like?"

"For one thing, Traktor is out buying some high end computer gear for him right now".

"Your Abaktor isn't big enough?" Julia knew that Oto had a state-of-the-art Macintosh G4 professional computer with a cinema-sized screen at his apartment, and it had been beefed up out of all recognition with memory and peripherals.

"Not for this kid. I tell you Julia, he's a born Abbakkator, even though he's never had any training. He'll be headed straight for Sao Tome, with a quick stopover at the Berenplatz, if you ask me. Wiktor tells me he's developed a computer-neural interface that basically can mimic Bakkt. It can read newman emotions. Imagine, here's this kid raised in a newman household who has invented, all by himself, with no help, a machine which does what it's taken our trained neural systems 100,000 years to develop, and he did it overnight. Things are changing, Pukin".

"They aren't changing, Mankin, they're just moving faster. You know that. And that means harmony and balance are being lost".

They both murmered "Sikkta ek si e tro".

Oto looked up. "My place a little before eight for drinks and introductions, alright?"

She said "I'll see you there" and left.

Oto looked out the window towards the late afternoon sun setting over New Jersey, then reached into his pocket and took out a small disc on a short chain. He pressed the disc against a lower drawer in the console behind the conference table and opened it. He took out a black leather binder and walked to the head of the table, where a computer was inset in the table top.

He opened the binder and looked for a specific page. Turning to the computer, he logged on to the the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles website. After clicking through a couple of pages, he consulted the binder. He entered a code on the keyboard and waited. He entered another code, waited, and was rewarded when a list of all registered licence holders and their addresses started to scroll down the screen. He located the entry for August, Kayley Klaudia, 221 E. 58th Street, apartment 2201, telephone 212-348-6657, female, age 34, hair red, eyes blue. Marital status was not indicated. No matter.

Klaudia! All doubt that she had a Beren ancestor disappeared. The name also fixed her ancestry in time, as well. Klaudia meant the newman-Beren liaison happened during the Roman Empire, or shortly after. He had already guessed that from her last name, August, but the Klaudia confirmed it. Spelled out in the old style and everything.

The capacity for these short-lived, short-memoried newmen to perpetuate their individual family cultures amazed him sometimes, especially when they were so unsuccessful at perpetuating their civic cultures. But, in the end, newman or Beren, family and clan is always the most important Konkkta or grouping, and it is family characteristics that are the most likely to endure.

He picked up the phone and punched a two digit number.

"Traktor? How's the shopping? Listen, I have a little something once you drop the Abaktor off at my place. You have a pen? Kayley August, 221 E. 58th Street, it's one of ours, apartment 2201, 348-6657. Yes, everything. Birthdate, boyfriends, trouble with the law, past history, parents, parents' whereabouts. Put an orskka on her phone and data line, and a bakka on her mail… A tap on the building surveillance system is a very good idea, yes. Can you put the feed through to me at the office and at home? Good."

"Traktor, I don't give a shit what the Pukkta said. This is my business, Berenin business, and if you laugh at me again, I'll have to call you out to Detrukka. Yes, I know you'll duskkt me, but I'll have to call you out all the same. Thank you Traktor".

He returned the leather binder to the drawer, placed the disk against the lock and put it back in his pocket. He paused for a moment, then unlocked the drawer again. He took out a fresh box of Zip™ disks and inserted one in the drive under the table. He formatted it and entered Kayley's address and age data, including her driver's licence number. He took the disk out of the drive, carefully labelled it "KKA" with his Cross pen, then locked it back in the drawer with the binder.

Chapter 6

Manahattan

March, 2001CE

Unlike his office, Oto's 20th floor condo suite looked east, out over Central Park towards 5th Avenue. The night was fine, if chilly, and the stars sparkled over the park and the Avenue, seeming to blend imperceptibly with the lights of the finest real estate on the planet.

The six adults were gathered in the main salon, drinks in hand and enjoying the view. There was a tingling sense of anticipation in the air which none of them addressed. The guest of honor had yet to make his entrance.

The company was dressed in 20th century Beren formal wear (not Ekkta Mirskkta, or play-acting formal clothes like the black suit Oto had worn that afternoon), comprising long dark richly brocaded robes for the men, open down the front over a floor length black gown like a djellabah. The women wore long draped brocade gowns, each with a light cloak or large shawl arranged over their shoulders. Both men and women were barefoot. Oto's live-in Winkin and Arkin or winebearer and meatbearer, served the drinks and replenished trays of sushi and satay.

Arktor wore a gold brooch in the shape of an arrowhead on his left shoulder, the sign of the hunter, which, as his name taught, was his family and his trade. Julia's father, Wiktor Merro, wore a smaller brooch of a small gold balance. This is the badge of an Orakkator, which is literally a jeweller, but translates nowadays as a currency trader or banker, for this was his family and his trade. Oto wore the gold balance on his left shoulder as well, because he was a banker, but he also wore a small gold medallion on a chain around his neck. This medallion looked like a circle with an "X" in it. This is the ancient and unmistakable symbol of the bear, of The Great Bear Mother and of the Beren people, and Oto wore this medallion because he was the Berenin, the senior Beren present, and the "spine" or "anchor" of the entire North American Beren population.

Julia's gown was a rich rust red colour, and her cloak was rose. Her sandy red hair was pulled back tightly in a bun, and she looked even more imposing than she did in business clothes. She wore a gold balance on her right shoulder.

Livia Marktor was about 18, extremely attractive in a very alert, coltish way, and she had the flaming red hair of a true-bred Beren. Her eyes were a startling green instead of the rich brown of the others, and her gown was a rich green brocade to match. She wore a brooch in the shape of a plumb bob on her right shoulder, for she was of the Marktor, or surveyor line.

Finally, the Greatmother, the Pukkta of North America, wore a flaming red gown which matched Oto's, Arktor's and Livia's hair, and was figured in black silk. On her right shoulder, she wore a small gold sperm, the sign of a Makkator, or Breeder. Around her neck, she wore a medallion like Oto's, but with a ruby set in the centre of the cross. Her hair was snow white and was pulled into a tight bun like Julia's.

"He is taking his time, like a true Beren" commented the Pukkta.

"You have to excuse him. He just met us this afternoon and we're already asking him to wear a dress" laughed Arktor.

"His father is deliberate, too" said Wiktor. "I've never known him to arrive at Boskkta on time"

"His father can be deliberate or hasty at his pleasure" reproved the Pukkta.

"Dokka u a Beren", the other five murmured in unison.

The doors at the end of the salon were opened tentatively, and Val walked in.

The change from that afternoon was complete. Where they had met an unhappy, aimless and nondescript pre-teen with red hair and a lumpy frame, here stood a young man with a light in his eyes and a new purpose on his brow. He was clearly getting used to his robes still, but they sat on him well, and suited his frame, emphasizing his strong shoulders and alert presence.

His outer robe was red, like the Pukkta's and his inner robe was black like the other men's, but edged in red. He had a small Beren cross in gold on his left shoulder. They all rose.

The Greatmother went forward to him, both hands stretched out in welcome.

"Walerius Berenson, welcome to your home, and to your family." She took his hands in hers and kissed him on both cheeks, then on his brow, stretching up to do so".

"Uh, thank you Wiktoriana, I'm glad to be here…"

"You must call me Pukkta, now, or Greatmother. But don't worry, you and I will have time together when you may call me by my name, Walerius".

"It's Val, actually, I hate Walerius…"

"The first thing you learn in your new life, Walerius, is that names are very important, more so than you think. Names are not just the sounds we call each other, they are the sounds the Mother calls us, and when She calls, we must answer. In our language, a Wal is a whale, and is not a good name to call a Beren, unless he is very fat and you want to hurt him. Walerius, though, is the name of one of our greatest heroes, and a man of great wisdom and strength. It is a name you will become proud of".

"Who named me Walerius? Wasn't it Robin and Janis?"

"No it was your father"

"Who is my father?"

"A very great man. But you will learn of that later. Come" She led the boy to the couch beside her, looking out over Central Park.

"In front of you, you can see the homes of 8 or 10 millions of people. In all those millions, there are fewer than 1000 like you, including the people in this room. The millions are newmen, we are Beren. There is a very great difference. You must grow to accept this. You are different. Everything you do from this point on in your life will be different, and everything you live for will be different. Accept this now, and the rest will be easy".

Oto looked at the Pukkta with admiration. She had encapsulated in a handful of words what he had been thinking about saying all day, and she had done it in a way that would make the young man feel proud and special, rather than outcast.

Once again, Oto wished he could ask the Greatmother to do the Bar Mitzvah, to unfold this Manka, but he realized that this was his responsibility as the senior Beren, as the Spine, and as the closest relative of the boy's father. She would be on call if necessary.

"And now, introductions. First, Wiktor Merro I think you know". Val gaped as it dawned on him that the piercingly erect white-haired man in the rich blue and burgundy robe was Dr. Wiktor his chess partner, a man he'd always thought of as old, fussy, tweedy, absent-minded and easy to rook at chess. The man he was looking at now wouldn't fall for that.

"Dr. Wiktor! All this time, you were…you just, you never said…"

"My job is teacher, not teller. I am Tekkator, not Bokkator. We all have our jobs to do, our Taskkta. Arktor is watcher, Baktor. Traktor is mover, just like his name teaches. The Pukkta is Greatmother, as she is called. Oto is Berenin, senior Beren. Livia and Julia, and Oto also, are Orakkator, gold handlers or bankers.

"What am I?"

"You are Berenson, Son of the Great Beren"

Chapter 7

The Berenhall

March, 2001CE

Kan 367, the nineteen hundred and seventy third Beren, was starting to feel his accumulated years for the first time. He was firmly in the middle of middle age still, 107 years old, and should have been thinking about fikkting, not fatigue, but it had been so busy for so many years, and he hadn't had time to relax and enjoy himself since before the second war.

He had succeeded his father Droko 46, the nineteen hundred and seventy second Beren, in 1952CE, and the relentless pace of technology since then, coupled with the fact that the newmen were getting dangerously close to developing their own off-world boost technology without Beren help and oversight had ensured that he had seen no rest in his 49 year reign.

The Beren rose from the heavily carved oak chair he had been sitting in and cracked his elbows behind his back. He had been at the computer for an hour and it hurt. He thought for the hundredth time that there was something wrong with the basic computer-human interface, and that there had to be a physically more dignified way to process information. 

He walked across the lustrous, pitted stone floor to the massive windows at the high end of The Hall. They had been opened in the great walls of the Hall during the reign of his forebear and namesake, Kan 183, around 2450BCE.

The massive oaken pillars, single great trees, which served to support the lintels, were intricately carved from top to bottom with scenes of the People's history: the Great Flooding of the Black Lake, the Mouth of the Sun which ate the eastern half of the inland sea and left a hole where a People had been, the five ages of ice, the Winkkator, and the five interages, the Sorkkator, the murder of Abul by his brother Kan (also this Beren’s forebear and namesake) and the Bane of the Beren, the Great Withdrawal, the caravans of The Retreat and other great stories, familiar to every Beren child from the Sakas, were pictured here to teach.

It gave him comfort, as it had hundreds of previous Beren, to know that his concerns would occupy just one small space, perhaps a handsbreadth, on these pillars.

Kan looked out, down the hillside through the ancient firs, younger by far than the ancient Hall. The village spread out at the bottom of the ridge between the two branches of the River Beren. The High End of the Hall faced west, to the summer solstice sunset, and through the tops of the trees he watched the sun brush the jagged crest of the Allgau Alps where they rose on the other side of the river.

The Valley of the Beren lies in a corner of Germany where Austria and Switzerland meet. It is surrounded by the Allgau Alps, which are not that popular with German hikers because they lack trails through their barren beauty.

Up in the valley, between the horns of Alps, The River Beren runs down from the mountains, approaches the valley floor, and passes on either side of an island. On this island, a high hogback ridge, called the Berenberg, rises a thousand feet above the valley floor.

Long ago, the top of the ridge had been scraped off, and a Great Hall built. It was originally of wood, and many parts are still of wood, but most sections of the Hall and its many dependencies are stone, polished smooth by 5000 years of use.

At the foot of the ridge, the village (town, really) of Berensdorf lines both sides of the island and the river. Bridges cross at the top and bottom of the island. The red pantiles of the village roofs rise into the fir trees, which then rise to the footings of the Hall.

Parts of the uncountable buildings, ranges and wings that make up the Hall were built in the twenty fifth century BCE, the fifteenth century BCE, the second century CE, the fifteenth century, and the nineteenth, and the twentieth, for that matter, but you wouldn't know it. It all looks like a collection of enormous rambling mediaeval fortress-abbeys, which is what it is, in a sense, if you stretch the definition of mediaeval.

The caves deep beneath the Berenberg had been occupied off and on by the Beren for 100 millennia, and there had been a permanent settlement on the river 80 millennia ago. From that time to this,  the Beren called the Berenberg home. The top was scraped off the ridge in 3000BCE and the original Great Hall of the Beren People was raised in wood. While it had been surrounded by other wings and ranges long ago, and had been encased in stone, it was, in fact, the same Hall, with the same great wooden walls, in which Kan now sat at the window.

The Hall was here for one reason. It persisted down through millennia for one reason. He ruled for one reason. The Beren People supported the entire national budget of Sao Tomé for one reason. They placed their most precious resource, their children, with unknowing newman families for one reason. As a people, they had to all intents and purposes, withdrawn from the world for one reason. They maintained a network of Berenhomes, or Firkka, in every community of any size around the world for one reason. The Pukkta bred the Beren heirs for one reason..

The Dikkta. The Great Plan.

Everything the Beren people did was in support of the Dikkta. Every transaction, every major clan or community decision, every raid or extermination, every voyage, every meeting of the Kalakkta, the Great Council, the selection of the Beren heir Principio by the Pukktas, the care of the People's gold, the breeding of children. It was all to further the goals of the plan.

The Beren had devised the Plan when they first realized the dextrous, clever, fertile and multiplying newmen posed a genuine threat to their-long term survival as a People.

That had been 35,000 years ago.

The Beren turned from the great window and returned to his computer.

Chapter 8

Manhattan

March, 2001CE

"You're really rich, aren't you, Oto?". Val was trailing his finger along the blade of a nineteenth century naval officer's gilt sword on the wall of Oto's study. Julia and Arktor had left, and the others were lingering over coffee and cognac in the dining room.

Oto looked out the broad windows, which faced south and were filled with the turrets of the Dakota. "It's not that simple. I'm not rich, the People, the Beren are rich. I'm just a holder, an Etrusktor of wealth. When the people need it, I give it back".

"Kinda like communism, huh?"

"It will become clearer when you learn the language. There are some ideas, some concepts that you can't express in English and the other new tongues. All the wealth of the Beren people belongs to the People, but much of it is held for them by the Beren himself, the Etruskkator, or Great Steward. What gold the Beren keep for themselves, they earn by working for the People.

But you 'hold' more than Traktor, don't you". It was a statement.

"As a matter of fact, Trakktor holds far more wealth than me. I work for the Beren himself, I'm one of his grandsons, so I get my needs cared for, but little else. What I do is what you would call public service. Traktor, though, before he began working with us, owned three trucking companies. He's worth millions. And it's his, he's not really an Etrusktor, he keeps it. Of course, he also pays for and maintains all our vehicles".

"In one sense, though, you're correct. We, the Beren, the People, are really rich. Richer than you can imagine. We own this building, and the one next door, and the one downtown where the bank has its offices. We own shipping lines, an airline, lawyers' firms. We have factories, labs and schools. We own our own supercollider, it's in Malaysia".

"Do you have a video graphic display design company?" asked Val hopefully.

"Not yet. You're going to set one up for us".

"This is like a great dream that's going to end soon, isn't it? It's OK, you can tell me, I knew it". Val looked fondly around the study as if saying goodbye to something that was going to fade.

"No. this is it. It's for real. And that's the problem, Val. You have nowhere to go, nothing to hang on to if you decide you don't want to stay with us. Your par…Robin and Janis are frantic about you, the State Police are searching White Plains and New Rochelle, and the Connecticut State Police are searching up the shore to Darien. You can no longer pretend this never happened. You're in it for real, do you understand?"

"If that's really true, and you're not shitting me, then it's the best news I ever had, and I'll never forget this day. Or you, Oto. Promise".

His earnestness made Oto laugh. "I think we understand each other, Mankin".

"What's that? Mankin?"

"Little man, why?"

"What's the word for Visionmaster?"

"Visionmaster?" Oto asked with real surprise, his first so far.

"Yeah, it's my handle, I use it when I'm gaming online".

"Bakkator"

"Can you call me that? Bakkator? Instead of Walerius?"

"You have to earn that name, Mankin" said Oto, looking closely at Val. Val responded with a direct stare.

"You can't come in if I don't want you to" said Val matter-of-factly.

"What?"

"In my head. You can't come in unless I don't mind, so don't even try".

"Si Ber!". Oto exclaimed. He stared in wonderment. This whole Bar Mitzvah was just turning into a bouquet of surprises.

"Can you speak me?"

"Speak you?"

"Can you thinkspeak me, without words?".

"LIKE THIS?"

Oto rocked back in his leather chair and knocked over a brass floor lamp behind him. The green baize shade came unmoored and landed on his head, which was completely humiliating.

He took the shade off his head, put his fingertips to his temples and shook his head, quickly like a dog shaking water off its coat.

"Alright, alright, I'm rusty, I need practice. Whew. But you really shouldn't do that in polite company, not if you want to make friends. At least not that loud. Ber".

"I don't know any other way of doing it"

"The Pukkta will help you. Don't do it again, for now, if you don't mind, though. Do you do this to newmen?"

"Newmen?"

"Your friends"

"Sometimes, if I really need to get someone to do something for me. But I never made them do anything bad, though. I promise, no shit. Why do you call them newmen?"

"They're called newmen because they came after us".

"Who is us, then?"

"Val, it is important that you know who we are, and who you are, so I will say this word once, but I will never say it again. We are Neanderthals. Now I will give you a better word, the real word. We are "Beren". You and I, we are the other human race. And we were here first".

Chapter 9

Manhattan

March 2001CE

Kayley August had the dream.

She dreamt of a night heavy with the scent of olive trees and oranges, of the hot evening mistral sweeping down from the Piedmont to the Mediterranean. Of a muscular, tender red-haired man who held her in his arms and entered her like a whisper and exploded in her like a storm. He was a man like Oto, but moreso. Older, more rugged, stronger. He was a soldier, for the broad purple-striped tunic of a Tribunus Laticlavius, a Senatorial Tribune lay on his kilt and breastplate in the corner of her tent. He was a lover, her lover, but only for this night.

And her passion was tempered in horror, even as she moaned in ecstacy she keened in fear. And she didn't know why, as the warm night died and bled into a chilling dawn.

And then always, the dream took her far above the battlefield, and she saw her lover in the field, and he faced a giant, naked, and he faced him ready to die. And she flew down and lit on his wrist, on her lover's wrist, to give him strength, and the fire was in his eyes, and his hair blazed like fire in the rising sun, and he fought and slew the giant, and she aided her lover, slashing at the giant's eyes with her sharp talons.

And the legions saw the omen, and the ravens came to feast on corpses, and there was a great slaughter that day as the legions swept the enemy before them, and only then did she wake and know that the giant was her father, the king, and the enemy was her own tribe.

She woke, as she always did from this dream, troubled and spent. Having now met Oto, a younger version of her lover in the dream, she was doubly troubled.

Chapter 10

Manhattan

March 2001CE

When Val walked into the main salon, breakfast was laid out on the dining room table and the early spring sun was streaming in over Central Park. His world was so new in so many new ways he could scarcely begin counting them.

"The orange juice is fresh-squeezed and the coffee's just been made. The croissants are fresh from  Zabar's. Did you have a good sleep?"

Something in the way Oto was looking at him made Val hesitate before answering.

"Whatever you had was good, I imagine" said Oto, a smile playing around his lips.

In fact the events of last night had been even more wondrous, if possible, than the events of the previous afternoon. Oto and Val had talked until after midnight, long after the others had left. Oto finally said they had lots of time to talk in the coming days and that he should get to bed, he wasn't used to Beren hours yet. He directed Val to a bedroom down the hall, towards the back of the apartment, which had been made up for him.

"Is there anything you need before bed?" Oto had asked. "A glass of milk, some hot chocolate?" The winkin would be glad to make some for him.

Val had said "I sometimes like to read before I go to bed. Do you have any good books?"

Oto had given him that little half smile he was showing this morning, and gone to the bookcases which lined three walls of the study.

Val had pushed open the door of his borrowed bedroom, with a basic anthropology text by Christopher Stringer and a 1620 European atlas by Guillaume Blaeu under his arm. The room was large, lit by pools of light from a chairside and bedside lamp. In the shadows, he could see rich hangings on the walls, like the robes he wore, and a brocade bedspread on a high, mediaeval canopied bed.

The door to the bathroom had been ajar, and a light shone through, reflected off what appeared to be miles of chrome piping and acres of shiny white tiles. Val carefully placed the two books on the chairside table beside the lamp and inspected the red pajamas which were laid out for him on the rich bedspread. They looked like they were exactly his size, and they were silk. There was no label to tell him this, but he knew silk when he felt it, and these were the real thing. The buttons were real mother-of-pearl, too, not plastic.

Val took off his overobe, and the black underrobe he had worn at dinner. He folded them as neatly and carefully as he could, and placed them on the chair where his normal (newman?) clothes from this afternoon lay. After a moment's thought, he picked up his old clothes from under the robes, and put them on the floor. He took off his underwear and stuck them in the waistband of his jeans, where they wouldn't be immediately obvious in the otherwise splendid room, and put on the silk pajamas. They felt as good on his skin as they sounded, which was very good indeed. He swung his arms around and listened to the soft shurring of silk on skin. Despite Oto's assurances, he expected to wake from this dream at any moment.

He had walked into the bathroom, which was almost as big as the bedroom, and feasted his eyes on the plenty that was arrayed there.

Now Val was a clean boy, with a very good sense of personal hygiene, better than is common among kids his age. He had never fought over his bath as a little boy, and took a shower every morning as an adolescent. He enjoyed thick, soft towels and good soap. While Robin and Janis were by no means slovenly, they just didn't attach that much importance to bathing accessories, and their towels were mostly threadbare and the family bathrooms mostly halfway houses for dirty laundry.

This bathroom, though, was a slice of heaven, more so even than the elegantly laid dinner table, the rich dark study or the whole amazing apartment. An abundance of thick, white fluffy towels hung on steam-heated towel racks. The bathtub was raised above the floor and actually had steps to climb up to it and down into it. The sink was a manly Edwardian affair, with a glass shelf above lined with hand-milled soap tied with ribbons, new toothbrushes, badger-brush shaving accessories, Trumper's shaving soap and a bottle of #4711 cologne. There was a matching Edwardian toilet and a more modern bidet in the corner. He'd seen pictures of a bidet before, but knew better than to mess with a bathroom accessory he'd never tried.

After peeing, Val had brushed his teeth with some handmade European toothpaste which came in a jar rather than in a tube, and which tasted of real mint. He then carefully unwrapped one of the bars of milled soap from it's exquisite paper wrapping and ribbon, and turned on the hot water. He mixed the cold water into the stream and noted with delight that the two combined at the perfect temperature as if by design. This must be what rich people's plumbing is like, he thought.

After washing his hands and face, he had dried them carefully on one of the big towels. As he did, he smelled his wrist. It smelled wonderful, like a long sunny afternoon spent in the shade, or like a lawn after rain. His head was literally turned by the smell, it was so fresh and, well, honest, somehow. He unbuttoned his pajama top, took it off and went back to the sink.

Leaning carefully over the sink, being sure not to drop any water on his silk pajama bottoms, Val had slowly and thoroughly washed the upper half of his body and arms in the wonderful soap and the perfectly warmed water. He took another towel (there were so many) and slowly dried his chest and arms, smelling himself as he did so. He put the pajama top back on, turned out the light and slipped back into the bedroom.

He went to the chairside table, picked up the Blaeu atlas and turned to the bed.

Livia said "I thought you got lost in there".

She had been tucked into the far side of the bed, the covers pulled up to her chin. Val started, and looked around as if to see if there were any other unannounced visitors.

"What are you doing here?"

"I came in while you were in the bathroom. I thought you might be lonely, your first night here"

"Do you live here?"

"I stay here sometimes, to help Oto out".

"Are you…uh…Oto's girlfriend?"

"Oto? He's a cutie, but he's too old for me. I prefer younger men".

Val's heart skipped a beat, or several.

"Are you going to…are you going to stay…here tonight?"

"Only if you want me to". Val literally didn't know what to say.

"Come on, get in" She had patted the bed beside her, where the sheets had been turned down.

Val had carefully placed the morocco-bound atlas back on the chairside table and gingerly mounted the side of the bed. He slid under the covers, smoothed them over his stomach and turned to look at Livia, her fire-red hair throwing off shards of light from the remaining lamp. She slid over and nestled into his left side.

His surprise had known no bounds. She hadn't been wearing anything.

She had leaned over his chest, breathed in, said "You smell nice" and started to unbutton his red silk pajamas.

Val started, realizing Oto was watching him over the breakfast table. He blushed furiously, quite a sight to see on a true redhead. It starts at the roots of the hair, then moves down the face like a wildfire spreading through tinder-dry forest. By the rime it reached his ears, they were the same colour as his hair.

"I'm…it was a great, yeah. I'm great, I feel great this morning. Good sleep" he stammered.

Oto burst out laughing, unable to contain himself anymore.

"Don't worry, you don't have to marry her, Val. Beren aren't like that. Just make sure you stick by her for a while. Livia's got a lot to teach".

Once again, Val wondered if Oto and Livia were, well, were…an item.

Oto said out loud "No, Livia's ambitious. She has her sights set on taller targets. You, for instance"

"What do you mean taller", looking at Oto's six foot two inch frame from the perspective of his four foot eleven inch height. He was immensely flattered.

"You’re the Beren's son. I'm his grandson. That means you're one step up the food chain from me, if you want to think of it that way. I think Livia's secretly been saving herself for you. She hasn't Puk, given birth yet, and she's almost eighteen".

"Me? I'm just a kid!"

"No, Val, you're a Beren, and a Beren is never just a kid. You are one of our People, and you have a task, like all of us"

Now Val did one of the bravest things he had ever done in his life. He spoke the truth about something he never thought about except in his darkest, unhappiest moments.

"Oto, you…and Livia, and Julia and the Pukkta and the rest have been really great to me, and I'm really grateful to all of you, but I don't think I'm the guy you want. I'm….I've got a…I'm not a normal person, I don't think". He was on the edge of tears.

Oto looked at him sympathetically and poured a crystal glass of orange juice. He waited until Val had taken a grateful sip.

"Did it all work last night? Any problems? Everything in the right place, if you know what I mean?"

"Well, I guess I don't really know, because I never did it before, but…I think…"

"Did Livia have any complaints?"

"Uh, well, no…"

Oto stood up. "You're a brave kid, Val. You've been carting around the belief that you're built the wrong way for years, and you just admitted it to me. Tough thing to do. Now I'm going to do something that would get me busted if I did it downstairs on the street"

Oto unbuckled his pants, pulled them open and lifted the front of his Thomas Pink shirt.

"What does it look like?"

"It, uh, it looks like your, um…penis" said Val, staring in spite of himself.

"And whose penis does it look like?"

"Well, it looks sort of like mine, only more hair".

Oto buckled his pants. "We're all built that way, Val, the proper way, with most of our equipment inside where it belongs. Until it's needed. Ask Arktor or Traktor, they'll show you. Don't worry, we aren't weird about stuff like that, they won't mind".

"You mean this is just me? I'm not deformed?" Val looked down at his crotch with immense relief.

"Just Beren. Not deformed. It's a cold weather adaption left over from the ice ages, the Winkkators. The newmen evolved in the south where it was warm, they could let it all hang out. But we Beren had to keep it inside, to keep the sperm temperature high enough to breed. It's very useful, you know, no one can ever kick you in the balls"

"Robin and Janis were worried because they hadn't dropped yet".

"Give up, they're not going to".

"Boy, is that weird"

"If you think that's weird, try this. How old do you think Traktor is?"

Val munched on a croissant he had draped in French blackberry preserve. "I don't know". He thought about Robin, who was 39. "About 40, I guess. No, younger, he looks pretty buff".

"He is pretty buff. And he's over 80".

""Whaaaa…?" Bits of croissant littered the Wilton carpet.

"We, meaning you, live a lot longer than the newmen. About twice as long. Because you're the real Beren stock, a direct descendant of Oto, the first Beren, you can expect to live about 200 years before you wear out"

"Holy shit! 200 years? You mean I could still be around in…uh…2200?"

"Possibly, if you stay out of fights and don't go bungee-jumping".

"That is soooo cool. I'll see the first Mars colony, time travel, nanoprocessors. I'll have my own antigravity hoverboard!".

"Possibly not. I don't want to lead you along, so I'll tell you right now. We're thinking of leaving Terra, and you might be coming with us. If that happens, you're far more likely to have your own team of plow-oxen".

"Whoa, Oto, leaving Terra? You mean earth? Now you're shitting me for sure!"

"This is important, Val. We met less than 24 hours ago. Since then, have I lied to you about anything?"

"Not yet".

"Do you think this is some elaborate ruse to embarrass you or confuse you?"

"I…I don't think so. No, I'm sure it's not"

"Then listen now. Beren do not lie. We never have. We don't even have a word for it in our language. We do what's called play-acting, Ekkta, in front of the newmen, to keep our secrets, but we don't lie. The reason we don't is because we can't. Oh, we can lie all we want to the newmen, but we can't do it to each other. Could you lie to me, Val?"

"If I wanted…" he felt the tendrils of someone else's consciousness slipping into the folds in his head like rain into cracks in the pavement. He looked straight at Oto and the tendrils stilled. All the same, he realized they were there, and were seeing far beneath the "him" he put on for the world.

"No, I couldn't".

"And I can't lie to you. It's disorienting at first but it makes your life twice as simple to live, I'm told. I don't know, I wasn't outbred like you".

"Where did you grow up?"

"Until I was your age, at the Berenhall, where we all come from. It's in Germany, on a hill, surrounded by the Alps. It's a really amazing place. After that, I went to school in Massachusetts until I was 22. Then I went off and did some stuff I'll tell you about later. Then I came here last year, to run the bank and be the Spine in North America"

"You're the leader of all of North America?"

"We don't say leader, the Beren doesn't lead. He's more like, he's The Spine, The Anchor, The Trunk. He's like the trunk of the tree from which all the other smaller branches, like you and me, grow. He's the anchor that holds the boat firm in a gale."

"Why did my…the Beren, why did he send me away" Oto sensed Val's longing for a childhood he could have had, surrounded by splendid people like himself and Livia.

"We've always sent our children away to live among newmen. We can't grow isolated, apart. We made that mistake once and it almost did us in." Oto looked out over the park.

"To tell you the truth, the best kids are sent away, the ones with the best chances. My dad is an heir to the Beren, he's one of his first sons, but Kan has had such a good long run (Dokka u a Beren) that my Dad's getting too old to succeed now. They knew that when they let me stay at the Berenhall to grow up. We all have our tasks. Mine's banking. And bonking. Dikkt u Dikkta"

Val shook his head. "Half the time I don't know what you're saying, Oto, but I don't mind, 'cause it's great trying to figure it out. What is dikdoodikkda?"

"Dikkt u Dikkta. 'We're all managed by the plan'. The Great Plan, that I talked about last night. The great Taskkte of which our little tasks are a part. That's what they say, anyway."

"Who's they?"

"Us. The People, the Beren. The old ladies, the Pukkte, our history, the Sakas. It's all we've got. All you've got, now. The Plan, and the survival of our species" Oto had grown morose. Val poked a little at his head, and got a whiff of loss, of longing and sorrow, before Oto smiled at him and shut his probing down.

"You said your task was banking and bonking. What did you mean?"

"Val! I hope you know some dirty words!"

"I know what bonking means. But what did you mean it's your task. I mean…it's usually something guys do for fun, isn't it?"

"Yeah, fikking's lots of fun, but fikkting, breeding, isn't so hot. I'm a fiktor, a breeder, because I have the pure Beren genome, like you. We're both direct male descendants of the first Beren. As a result, I pretty well have to fikkt with whoever the Pukkta tells me to, to improve the bloodline, and make more little purebred Beren who'll become fiktors. It's the price I get to pay for all this, I suppose. That, and the fact I basically have to go where the Great Council, the Kalakkta, sends me".

"I used to get all resentful, and wish I'd been born someone like Arktor, who isn't that closely related to the Lineage, or Traktor. Those guys can almost do what they want, go where they please and become Kunaktors with anyone they want. But, you know, I look around at this place, and at the interesting stuff I get to do, and, you know, it's a small price to pay. And I get in a little fikking on the side, off-duty, if you know what I mean. Which you should too, as long as you have the chance. If Livia can put up with you, get it in while you can, because the old ladies will be pairing you up with all the best girls in Berendom before you know it, and some of them aren't as hot as Livia".

"Like, getting married, and raising kids?" asked Val, with a slightly worried look.

"No, no" laughed Oto. "We don't do married. A woman's first makki is for the People, her second is for herself. A lot of girls are going to want to have their first makki with you, and then they go become Kunaktors with someone else and have their second makki and raise both of them. Or they raise them in a hearth with a bunch of other women. Or alone, sometimes. In fact, you probably won't get to settle down with one Kunaktor for years, until you're in your thirties, or even forties.

"OK, Oto, it's cool hearing you talk Beren, but I'm lost. What's a makki?"

"A child"

"And what's a kunaktor"

"Your fikking partner, the person you sleep with and stay with mostly. Some people have a couple of them, like makin, who love men and women too".

"Like, gay?"

"Makin. It's different. A makin is a man who has some Pukka Wikka, mother power, which is very rare. It's also really useful to the People, because makin can cross the two Yokkte, or consciousnesses, the male and the female. Improves communication"

"What are the women who have some male power called?"

"All women have male power"

"Boy, I've got a lot to get through. Is there going to be a test?"

Oto laughed. "Yes. It’s called life. Don't worry. Val, Wiktor will be doing a lot more than playing chess with you over the next little while"

"I guess you should really start calling me Walerius, like the Pukkta said"

"I don't know. She's right, Wal means 'fatso', but you're not fat, so I don't see the harm"

"Who was Walerius?"

"A Roman general. He won a battle with the help of a raven".

"Is that it? The Pukkta said he was one of your greatest…"

"Our…"

"Our greatest heroes. A bird helped him win the battle?"

" I don't know, it's not my Kronikkto. There could be more about him I don't know"

"Oto, come on"

"Kronikkto. Millennium. The Roman empire doesn't fall into the millenium I studied as a kid. I did the sixth millennium BCE, the Black Lake Flood. Very juicy, very tragic. I can name all the sixth millennium Berens in order, do you want to hear me?".

"You studied a thousand years of history as a kid? I assume you mean a kid my age, not some teenager".

"Up until I was twelve, yes. Why, you don't think a thousand years is enough? I know they used to have to learn three Kronikkto, with a core concentration on the middle one, but that was back during The Troubles"

"No, no, Oto, I think that's amazing. I'm only going to get 200 years of American history in high school…or I was going to…I guess I'm not going to now".

"Don't worry Val, where you're going will be a lot more fun than high school in White Plains".

"Where am I going?"

"You'll be here for a while, until Wiktor gets through with you. Then, Berenberg"

"Berenberg? In Germany?"

"Home. To meet your father. No shit".

Chapter 11

Manhattan

March, 2001CE

Val and Oto were in the conference room at the bank. Oto had spent the morning showing Val around. Livia had smiled at both of them very professionally when they came in, but had briefly grabbed Val's ass later when she walked by him in the hall. He had blushed the colour of the exit sign. Oto had pretended not to notice. Val was beginning to like Oto a whole lot, for a nephew.

Oto sat at the head of the lignum vitae table and booted the inset computer. He took the small metal disk from his pocket and held it against the tabletop above the monitor. The computer rebooted. Val drew in and watched.

"Is that touchscreen? Or does it have a focused magnetic field or something?"

"I'm not sure. Traktor made it for me. He's good at locks".

"What's it do?"

"Two hard-drives, one beneath the other. This boots the second one, which is cased in lead. You can't detect it. The only thing in common is the monitor and the keypad"

"You don't need the keypad. I can project that on the tabletop, then read the conductivity of your fingertips. And you don't need a monitor, either. That's just goggles. Or even, pupil-direct projection, I'm big into that".

Oto turned in his chair and looked at him in silence.

"You better get your fikking in with Livia now. I have a feeling you're not going to be allowed to stay in New York long. We need you in Sao Tomé".

"Where's Sao Tomé?"

"Didn't you read that atlas I gave you last night? No, I guess you didn't".

"That atlas was from 1620. I don't think it had any Sao Tomé in it".

"Yes. That's the problem with newman geography. It all happens so quickly, you can't keep track of it. Sao Tomé is an island off west Africa, 200 miles from the coast of Equatorial Guinea. It's a very poor, very small country and we bought it".

"You guys bought a country?"

"Well, we pay the annual national budget, and we're the six largest industries in a country where the seventh largest is postage stamps. We've been paying the national debt since they became independent from Portugal in '75. We pay the President, he lets us fire our rockets from there. It's a good location, it's got unlimited downrange ocean, and it's right on the equator"

"Maximum coriolis force" averred Val.

"You got it. Sounds like you can't wait to get there. It's hot, though".

"How do you keep it so quiet? I read Popular Science and Popular Mechanics".

"We work under German federal cover. They get the research and the ballistics for free. They don't like to share everything with the European Union. There are a lot of thunderstorms on the equator. That's when we launch. No one sees".

Oto looked back at the computer and said "I think there's something you can do for me".

"Anything, Oto. I owe you".

"Good. Sit down. This is some closed circuit feed I'm getting from an apartment south of here. I'm getting it pumped into the house, too".

The screen showed a low quality black and white image of an expensive apartment building lobby, with a concierge desk in one corner of the image and the revolving doors in another. After a few seconds, the image flickered and was replaced by one of a bank of elevators. Then the image flickered again and showed the workout room, then the laundry room, then the lobby again. The cycle continued.

"You have this feed coming in over the modem?"

"The trunk, actually". Val whistled. He said "Excuse me" and took Oto's place at the keypad.

"By definition, if you have signal out, you have signal in. And this feed'll be designed to be remote monitored. So there's a remote control, and it probably uses one of the spare soundtracks as a carrier signal". Val always got a little didactic when talking to a computer. The whole time, he was keying at the pad, switching rapidly through images until he started to reach pages of indecipherable text. He started typing into the text, and moving blocks of it around. Now he was talking again.

"The two horizontal arrows will take you back and forth on the ground floor. The vertical arrows will take you to the upper floors. What floor is the target on?"

"22".

"I'll make that the default floor when you hit the up arrow. Which apartment? There are two cameras per floor, each pointing a different direction from the elevators"

"2201"

"That'll be the one closest to the elevators, which is cool"

The image of an apartment hallway appeared. Sure enough, the door across from the camera was 2201.

"What are you going to do now? Sit down and wait for the target to appear? Watch all day?" Val asked.

"I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet".

"Do you have an image of the target, something I can scan?"

Oto thought for a moment. "Sure. The security cameras at reception, and out by the elevators".

"Where?"

"Here. The bank. She was here yesterday"

Val cocked an eyebrow at Oto. "Off-duty, huh?"

"Never you mind, little mankin. What are you going to do with the video feed?".

"Do the feeds come to this computer?"

"No, they go to the monitoring company and to reception…"

"…and they go to the monitoring company on the trunk and the spare soundtrack is the carrier signal. It's easy once you get the hang of it".

In a few minutes he had the video feed from the bank's cameras and those from the apartment building split on the screen.

"Now most video-monitoring systems will keep images on tape retrieval for a week or two, in case the cops want them. So we'll just…move back into retrieval on the bank system and…When was she here?"

"11:30 in the morning"

Val clicked through the time codes for a moment.

"Nice. She looks like Livia, sort of". Today, every girl in the world looked like Livia to Val, but the resemblance was there on the screen.

"OSX has video editing bundled in, right? I use Linux. Yep, it does. So….we cut and paste her face, copy, do a digital analysis and frame match like this…then we transfer the image to the other side and run a frame match on the tape retrieval from the camera outside her door and…God damn I'm good. There she is".

Oto looked over his shoulder. There she was alright, last night at 9:30 PM, entering her apartment. Alone.

"You're good, alright. The best I've ever seen. Um, it's a little thing, but we don't say god. It's not a happy word for us. The word we'd use would be Ber, the Mother. You don't have to worry about it for now, but you'll want to watch for it when you get to Berenberg. And the Mother doesn't damn anyone, either, she gives us life".

"OK, Oto, I'll try not to say it, but, you know, I've been saying it my whole life".

"Do you believe in god?"

"I don't know. Not really, I guess"

"Then it shouldn't be too hard to stop saying it".

"What about the Mother. Do you believe in Her?"

Oto laughed merrily, as if the thought were absurd. "The most I can do is hope She believes in me! You don't believe in the Mother or not believe in Her. She just is. All around you, it's the Mother".

Val looked at the computer for a moment as if he expected to see the Mother in the monitor. He turned back to Oto.

"I've programmed the cameras in her building to recognize her image and record a mime-file direct to this hard-drive, sorted by time code. You just have to log on to the button labelled "target", here, and it'll automatically update the image file. You can also watch in real time, of course. Use the scrolling bar to move back and forth through the images".

Val turned and looked at Oto. "Why  do you have to spy on her? Don't you know where all the Beren are?"

Oto looked at Val for a long moment and made up his mind.

"She's not Beren, Val. She's newman"

"You told me last night we couldn't breed with them, that it was a big voodoo".

"A big taboo. No, we don't breed with them, mostly. That doesn't mean we can't fik with them. You've never heard of a condom?"

"I get the feeling the Pukkta wouldn't be cool with this"

"Look, Val, we Beren boys have to stick together. I know the Pukkta's always right, but this isn't about the Dikkta, the Plan. This is just a little recreational fikking for me. You're getting yours now, don't I get to play? Help me out with this, and I'll see if I can get Livia sent back to Berenberg with you. It's time she went".

"But you said we couldn't lie".

"And you can't. But as long as no one asks you a direct question, you never have to give a truthful answer to it, right?"

"So why can't we breed with the newmen, Oto?"

"We can breed children, actually, but the children we breed aren't Beren, and that just dilutes our Lineage. You'll get this in a lot more detail from the Pukkta, but I'll give you the quick and low down now. A Beren male, like me, can mate with a newman female, like her, and we'll have kids. They'll be healthy, red-haired probably, and a lttle better at most things than most newmen. But they aren't Beren. Eventually, the Beren gets bred out of them and disappears, except when some red hair crops up a few generations later"

"However, even though they're not Beren, the male children of this mating will carry our other Y chromosome, which newman males don't have. As long as that male child has male descendants, they'll pass on the Beren male gene. If you mate a Beren female with one of these male descendants, the children will be pure Beren again, even if thousands of years have passed. The female kids don't carry the male gene though, and if ever a generation has no males, the gene is gone".

"Now, if you mate a Beren female to a newman male, the outcome is different. She'll only have female children, and they won't be Beren. What's more, her motherline will only have female children for generations, sometimes a millennium"

"So if our males breed with their females, we don't perpetuate the Beren bloodline, and we lose. If our females breed with their males, we can't breed males anymore, and we lose. Everyone loses. Not immediately, but in a couple of thousand years. Not long".

"Not long?" laughed Val.

"A couple of thousand years isn't long when you've been around for a hundred thousand of them. We tend to take a longer view than the newmen do. The newmen have short memories and short attention spans. That's why they're dangerous"

"But if you guys are so …"

"If we  guys are so…"

"If we're so rich, and we've got all this power…"

"Not power, influence. There's a difference"

"Alright, all this influence. How come the Beren don't just rule? You said there's a hundred thousand of us"

"About a hundred and forty five thousand. It's a drop of water in the ocean, Val, an Aki in the Aku. We're less than one third of one one hundredth of the world's population. And we don't breed very well. Not like newmen. Our pukka can only ever have two makki, one male and one female. A tuska and a puska. That's just barely enough to sustain our population, if we're careful. Which is why every child is so precious, and why the Pukkte's breeding charts are so important. That's why Livia's first makki will be for the People, and why she probably wants to have it by you".

"That's great" said Val, a little uncertainly.

"Don't worry, she'll take care of the details, if I know Livia".

"Did you ever, you know…Have you ever fikked with Livia?"

"Livia? Ber, no! She's my little sister!".

Chapter 12

Manhattan

March 2001CE

Kayley August felt vindicated. What she had learned in the last day and a half about the Berenberg Bank, and the family that owned it, just served to confirm her hunch that these people weren't exactly mainstream.

She had no proof that Oto was a warlock, of course, but he certainly seemed to come from a weird family.

Kayley had a called in some favours among her contacts in the commercial realty world. She had a list of all the Berenberg Bank-owned buildings in Manhattan (326!) on the desk in front of her, and a list of 131 separate buildings (including the one he lived in and the one she lived in) registered to Oto Berenson. In addition, a list of 258 buildings (mostly light industrial on the East Side and at the Piers) which were registered to other variations of the names Berenberg, Berenson or Berendorf. An impressive portfolio for a German family no one had ever heard of. In total, they were the third largest landlord in Manhattan, after the city itself and Olympia and York.

The most curious thing about this list, in the real estate business anyway, was that none of these buildings were owned in consortia or in partnership with other landlords. Titles were single, clean and lien-free. This is more than rare. It's perverse. No one is so rich that they own that much property and don't need to borrow against some of it to pay for more. It's far cheaper to borrow against that much capital than to own it.

Kayley decided the only thing which would motivate this kind of behaviour was an obsessive need for secrecy, protection of assets from scrutiny. Money-laundering? A "flashbulb" told her this didn't match the profile, somehow. Another thing. You don't just get that much real estate in Manhattan overnight. A volume of space like that would rock the Manhattan rental market if it moved at once. They'd owned some of these buildings for a very long time.

Among the things she'd learned at the Public Library yesterday was that a coffeehouse owned by a Markus von Berenberg operated as a sort of foreign currency and trade exchange in lower Manhattan in 1620, and that a Bank Berenberg helped finance John Hancock's funding of the Continental Congress in 1776.

Oh. It also appeared that title on most of Oto's buildings had transferred to him from a W. Merro (Wiktor!) last year. Once again, clean, single, lien-free. W. Merro had owned them since 1952, when he'd taken over title from K. Marktor. Prior to that, in 1899, from L. Berenson. Database title search petered out in 1840. Names again.

Kayley leaned back and looked out the tall narrow window of her office on the twenty first floor of 9W57. It faced north, over the park, and she could look down on the busy rooftops of The Plaza. It was a better view than Oto's, she thought with satisfaction. It was a better building, too, a Manhattan signature address for businesses. Everyone knew 9W57.

Everyone knew 9W57. She'd never really noticed Oto's building before, despite being in the business fifteen years. It was a nice building, too. Really nice, solid, and the security was top-notch. She knew. She could smell it almost. Always had been able to, whether a place was…fear-ful or peace-ful.

She looked out over the bare trees in the park, the lawns bright green beneath them, and considered how the miracle of compound interest might work for someone who had invested in Manhattan real estate 400 years ago. She did some lightning calculations in her head.

"Jesus Christ" she breathed aloud. Who knows what else they own, besides buildings? A thousand dollars (how much did it cost to fund a Continental Congress?) invested at, say, a conservative 5% since 1776, two hundred and twenty five years, compounded, say quarterly, because of the difficulty getting around back then, would be…$7,170,057,500 and lunch. Seven billion dollars.

She was going to have to get to know the Beren-whatever family much better, especially Oto and his 131 buildings.

Her phone rang. It was Leo Toole, her Chief of Security at Caldwell.

"You got a peeping tom, Kay".

Chapter 13

The Berenhall

March, 2001CE

The Beren was dreaming.

The amber ship lands.

Towers of shining dust build skywards against the pressure of hot landing motors, the giant landing gear begin their intricate unfolding dance, the sun core engines glow from white hot to amber as their thermonuclear fires are damped. High on the bridge of the “Rape Of The Sun”, a skilled pilot feels his way to the ground. The power to the landing motors is reduced, the ship descends the final metres and the gear shriek with the load as the 150 metre amber hull settles to the plain. It’s quite magnificent to see.

As with any trained Bakkator, or seer, the Beren's Ka, or surconscious, recognized the dream as a vision, settled his alphawaves into a receptive pattern and prepared to imprint the flow of images on the matrix of his Yokkta, or conscious mind. He would not forget the dream when he woke, and he would be able to replay and manipulate the images at will in his quest for its meaning.

He knew what he was seeing. Ezekiel 14. The mad old wallah of the desert had seen this too.

 “And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire”

He knows this place. The plain is outside the loading facility on Titan, largest moon of the planet Saturn. The plain is at least featureless, which is preferable to the loading facility, which is a not very nice part of a not very nice world, which is why his race named it Sunberg, after the home of the adversary, the Other.

His race built the amber ships long ago to leave their home, a green and beautiful world, when they were finally driven out by the Other.

They came to the Saturn system as refugees, settled the moon Rhea, and achieved an uneasy peace and security with the Other. This peace and security has lasted 2000 years, only a moment in their history, and it is now unraveling. They have demanded too little for too much for too long, and now the Other will try and drive them out again.

They are Beren, Children of the Bear. They have survived for countless millennia by defending their halls against the Other, the Children of the Sun, but also by making accommodations with them when they must. The dreamer is Kan 367, a Beren, and is also Berenson, so he understands this, that accommodations must be made, but his memory is as long as his race’s. They have kept the amber ships for this time. Lovingly burnished by generations of hands, maintained as living museums of their past, these fast and ancient ships will one day return them to their old green world. But not before they have exacted a lasting and devastating revenge.

The dreamer sees the Amber Ship resting on it's massive gear, the hull fabric crackling and popping as the intense heat of orbital entry dissipates. The dreamer is one of several who watch. They are reverent and silent, as men who are watching their visions come to life. The dreamer looks to his left and to his right and takes in his companions' devotion.

Eyes that have never seen light brighter than the sun shine from under heavy bony brows and behind matted reddish-brown hair. Arms that can throw their stone-tipped, oak-hafted spears through a predator are raised in adoration of the largest thing they have ever seen move. Tightly bundled in knot-stitched furs and untanned hides, they watched as Fleet Legion Loaders in utility coveralls help Legion Troopers in light body armour unload a pallet of hovercats.

The dreamer awoke. Kan was instantly replaying the Bakkt. He had seen the ship land before, heard the history of the Titan people, known the dreadful answer at the end, but he had never looked at his fellow watchers before.

It's all a matter of perspective. Of where you stand, of the angle you see it from.

These were not Loaders on Titan, largest moon of the Saturn system. These were his ancestors, these were the firstmen, this was Terra and the Bakkt took place a very long time ago.

This changed everything. As in every single thing the Beren had worked for across thirty five millennia. He would see the Pukkte of All the People now.

Chapter 14

Manhattan

March, 2001CE

"Something's bugging you, Mankin?". Oto and Val were walking through the ground floor lobby out to the Escalade, where Traktor waited for them.

"I'm beginning to think I shouldn't like it when you call me that. I am your uncle, and you're only thirteen years older than me".

"OK, you're right. I'm sorry, and I'm also Dekwi. I got called that a lot when I was a kid, and I guess I just want to do some of it myself. Dekwi. OK, Uncle Val, tell your nephew what's got your knickers in a knot". They climbed in the back door of the Escalade, as Traktor walked around the front and got behind the wheel. For the first time, Val noticed the bulge under Traktor's left armpit.

"Well, if Livia's…Oto, she's your sister! That makes her my niece. I'm her uncle! I can't…We have to…". Oto closed the door and nodded to Traktor.

"Val, she and I have the same mother, but her father never met our father. You're probably more closely related to Traktor than you are to Livia".

"It's not…?"

"Incest? No. It's not Fikkta Pukka".

"Is that bad?"

"Mostly, yes, very. It depends. You'll have to get the Pukkta to enlighten you on that, I'm not a Makkator. The point is, Livia's my sister, but she's not your niece. You have the same fatherline but a different motherline from me. You have a different fatherline and a different motherline from her. You're cool. See?"

"No"

"Our women never have their two makki by the same man. With our small gene pool and low fertility rate, that's simply not productive. So they makkt…make each makki with a different man. Like I said, the first one is for the People, and the Pukkte help the women decide which man is best for the Makkte, the Lineage. The second is up to you. To her, I mean. Most women are done by their twenties. They don't really settle down with a Kunaktor until they've had their first one, though".

"That's so…that's kinda like breeding slaves, isn't it?"

"No one has to fik if they don't want to, but I don't know many people who aren't up for a good one, and we're all pretty good at it, it comes with the territory. All the Pukkte ask is that you include one special fik with the rest while you're fikking around in your teens. You're going to have the babies anyway. It's not a bad deal, considering you never have to use a condom when you're fikking with women over twenty five"

Val nodded sagely, as though fikking with women over twenty five was familiar territory.

"What about AIDS and, uh, those other STDs?"

"Syphilis? Gonorrhea? Don't you guys do biology anymore? That might make this tougher. You don't get them"

"I don't get AIDS?". Val looked like yet another of life's burden had been lifted from his young shoulders.

"You don't get sick. Period. Viruses, prions, bacteria, nothing. We outlived anything that could kill us long ago".

"I was sick last year. When we went to the Jersey Shore!"

"Bad crab cakes in Long Branch isn't sick, it's stupid. Have you ever been to a hospital?"

"Yeah, I broke my collarbone falling downstairs"

"You fell off the roof, where you won't supposed to be"

Val's eyes widened.

"Apart from that, you've had an annual physical from Dr. Ekktor, right?"

"Yeah. He never seemed to do anything, like look down my throat, or anything. He'd just ask me about Robin and Janis".

"That's his task. He didn't have to do anything. You don't get sick. Can't get poisoned, either. I mean snakes and things, not nerve gas. Well, most nerve gas, anyway. Just don't be stupid. If you jump in front of the subway, you're probably going to die. Like I said, stay out of fights and don't take up bungee-jumping and you'll live to a ripe old age".

"I am so fucked. There is so much I've gotta learn. You guys all have a head start on me"

"There's some more. Hey, Traktor, do that thing with the quarter for Val" asked Oto.

Traktor took a quarter from his pocket and held it up, his forefinger on the top edge and his thumb on the bottom edge. With no apparent effort, he folded the coin in two, then handed it into back seat to Val.

"Don't show it to anyone. I could get in trouble, defacing the currency like that".

"I'd have done it, but I'd get blisters. Not good for my Ekkta" said Oto, a little defensively.

Val was turning the folded quarter over in his hands. The fold was still hot from stress. "That is sooo cool, Traktor, how did you do it?"

"You'll be doing it yourself in a year or two, Walerius". Val liked the sound of his name the way Traktor said it.

"What do you mean, I'll be doing it?"

Oto asked "Do you play any sports?"

"No, not really. I don't really like all that organized stuff, like ants. I was on the wrestling team for a while"

"And?"

"Well, I beat everybody else on the team, and the coach wanted me to train for the statewides, but Robin and Janis don't really 'approve' of competitions, and, actually, I was getting sort of tired of it. It was so simple and everybody tries to make it so complicated. Making you learn all the moves and practicing them instead of just wrestling"

"We're really good at wrestling. It's in your blood. If you'd gone out for track, you'd probably have been shaving seconds off of times across the state. That's why you weren't encouraged to. The reason we come and get outbred Beren like you when they're twelve is we've got to get them out before the big change happens".

"You mean puberty? I'm halfway through puberty. I've got pubic hair. It's not such a big deal".

"You're halfway through what the newmen call puberty, Val. It's all they know. Your Beren puberty kicks in when you're thirteen, just like clockwork, next November. That's when your muscle mass will start getting denser and your bones will start thickening. Your neck and your head are going to get heavier, and  your chest is going to require a whole bunch of new shirts"

"By the time you're fourteen, you'll be about twice as strong as a very big newman, and you'll be a lot quicker, too. No one'll be able to land a punch on you except another Beren, especially a female, 'cause they're quicker. You'll be fast as well as quick, and you could post 3 minute miles all day if you wanted to. You would have to push yourself really hard to exhaust your stamina or wear yourself out. Long distance swimming races, as in across the Atlantic, used to be a big Beren sport back in the old days. It all takes about seven months and it hurts. If you think newman puberty is bad, Beren puberty is hell"

"It's hell, Walerius" said Traktor from the front seat. "But you get to bend quarters"

"Great. You guys make it sound like the Amazing Hulk"

"Where do you think they got the idea?"

"For the Amazing Hulk?"

"For all the their bogeymen. Trolls, fairies, goblins, communists, werewolves, witches, ogres, Cathars, homosexuals. Kan, of Cain and Abel, he was a Beren. He really was. We've taken major shit from the god bunnies for the last five thousand years".

"The last two thousand".

"There were lots of god bunnies around before the J-man showed up"

"You mean Jesus?"

"Yeku. The J-man. He's in my motherline".

"Jesus is your ancestor? He was a Beren!?"

"All the best people are".

Chapter 15

The Berenhall

March, 2001CE

The Beren commanded the tasks of more than a tikkito, a hundred thousand of Beren around the planet, he wielded gold reserves greater than those of the rest of the world combined and he had the nudge to topple prime ministers, but when he went to consult the Pukkte, The Greatmother of all the People, he went to her, walking the long corridors alone, without escort.

The gold funeral masks of his ancestors hanging in ranks on the gallery walls, the polished skulls hiding behind the grinning mouths and eyeholes, comforted him. They had peace, their tasks were complete. "Sikka ek, dekka ek, dek ek", he murmured. "Will be, has been, isn't now". The Pukkte would help unfold his Bakkta, his vision for him.

He turned from the Gallery of the Forebears into the Passage of the Heroes, the Wiktors. Here the heads of countless newman enemy chiefs, embalmed in cedar oil and glowing with the sheen of thousands of years of reverent handling, rested in ranks of niches from the bottom to the top of both walls. These were the Kasskta, the powerheads. As the homes of these great men's Ka, these glossy leather gourds with their gaping orbits were both honoured and used by the Beren People. Honoured for the countless ways they had tested Beren skills, or Te, throughout the millennia, and used in drawing the Circle (Akorakkta) for the Great Singing, the Korwikkte, which was now practiced only in the direst emergencies.

The Singing (Korwikkta) is practiced in the Great Hall by the men, just as the Weaving is practiced deep inside the Berenberg in the sacred place by the women. Korwikkta is a formalized singing of the Peoples' Boasts, or Kor, once practiced before every raid, fight or mortal combat. These days, the Singing is held before major projects are initiated, before major investments or acquisitions are made and in times of crisis.

At times of extreme Berka (worldwide) crisis, or before an undertaking of species-survival importance, the Great Singing (Korwikkte) is held. Then the polished heads of the Beren people's finest, bravest enemies are taken from their niches and gathered in the circle that describes the ritual space, the Akorakkta, and the great Sakas are sung within it. The Korwikkator sings the verses, laden with repetitive and rhythmic mnemonic keys which unlock dormant suggestive impulses. Meanwhile, the listeners, the Orsktor, chant antiphonal responses against the verse, setting up harmonics which stimulate rarely-used synapses in all Beren males present. The result is a "fine-tuning" of the communal 'Ka', or neural awareness, which results in a heightened communal physical consensus of emotion and action. In this way the Beren warriors of old (and today), forge the group cohesion so foreign to their nature, yet so necessary in holding their own in battle against the newmen.

If the crisis was one of oceans and seas, the heads of great admirals would enclose the circle. If consequence on land were risked, great generals would be brought. If religious war threatened, the heads of messiahs and mahdis were ranged, their stretched grins and hollow sockets facing the centre of the circle in the centre of the Hall, where the Korwikkator would stand and sing, often for three or four daycycles without rest. Mikin Boktor, the Korwikkator who led the Great Singing after the Black Lake flood  in 5524BCE had sung ceaselessly for seven daycycles, a full wikron.

Kan gazed on the head of Amunthfit, the general of Rameses the Great, defeated at the great battle of Kadesh by the Beren and their Hittite servants in 1215BCE. Rameses had escaped that time, but death had got him at 96 before the Beren had a chance to tukkt, exterminate him. Rameses was the the ultimate enemy, Dekoma, unhuman, one who would use the Beren people's own skills and Makkte, Lineage, to destroy them. Rameses was the single most dangerous human enemy the Beren faced in the 65,000 years they had been dealing with the newmen.

The red headed Rameses was himself half-Beren, a breeding experiment of the Kalakkta gone wrong. He carried the Beren male gene, the Fi, and he learned of his parentage, and some of its secrets, early. He sought to use his knowledge to claim dominion over the world, the Berk, and almost succeeded. He had kidnapped a Beren wife, Nefertari (Nefarik), and had a son by her, his first, and a daughter. This son, of course, was pure Beren, with none of Rameses in him. The Beren saw to it his son died before Rameses, to teach the old Pharoah the futility of his hubris. Not content, the Pharoah committed Pukka Fikkta, incest, by raping his Beren daughter Phthafimtep in an effort to perpetuate his line.

The unfortunate outcome of this conflict with the newmen of Egypt was the birth of a genetic Beren-newman 'infection', which persisted from the line of Rameses and Phthafimtep. Not quite Beren, more than newman, these Unbreds (Dekpuk) had spread, in numbers far smaller than the Beren, but persistent throughout the thirty three centuries since.

Wherever an unbroken male-to-male succession has persisted among these vermin, there exists the danger of a true Unbred cropping up, as capable as a Beren, and as durable, but with none of the Harmony and Balance. These unbreds often carry the name Ramsay, or de Ramezay, or sometimes, Remissi. These names are a danger signal to watchful Beren, and tangible proof that names, even among the newmen, are always important.

Not all Ramsays are Dekpuk, and not all Dekpuk carry the name Ramsay, but the name is important enough to the Beren that they maintain a well-endowed fund, the Ramsay Trust, to undertake genealogical research and serve as a gathering place for Ramsay family historians. In this way, the Beren track the whereabouts and monitor the activities of all the Ramsays they can find. The Ramsays are not aware of who they are like the Beren. Nor do they have the Yokkta, the communal consciousness, but they can learn to develop their Ka on their own, and can be very destructive if allowed to breed freely.

The old Beren turned from Amunthfit's head, it's lips and cheeks still stained by the tattoos of his rank, and walked down the polished stone passage. Here was the skull of Quintilius Varus, Roman General and Procurator of Palestine, but unable to excape the sword of Arminikus 32, the nineteen hundred and ninth Beren, under the dark eaves of the Teutoburgerwald in 9CE. A loyal servant of the Roman people, and therefore of the Beren and the Dikkta, he had returned from his posting in Kana with a dangerous knowledge which threatened to upset centuries of careful planning by the Kalakkta.

Not only dangerous, he was foolish, for he proposed to increase his stature in Rome by betraying the long unspoken treaty which kept the Beren and the Romans on different sides of the Weser river. He was tukkt (exterminated) for his transgression, and for the secret he carried. Three legions fell with him that day and the Roman Empire never bothered the Beren again.

A few feet along, Oliver Cromwell's head, only recently recovered, grinned from its niche. His Dekiwikkta, or taboo breaking, was too all-encompassing to detail, and much of it was manifest in his character. He was a Ramsay. Through his veins coursed the unreasoned dekomak (unhuman) hatred of harmony and balance and all Beren virtue which is characteristic of the true Unbred. The axe which separated his head from its body had been swung by a Beren.

Near the very end of the hall, he came to the bald and shining head of Adolf Eichmann. Not all Beren tukktas arrive at the end of a blade. Some are carried out by war crimes tribunals.

The Beren approached the flight of wide shallow steps, their treads worn into bows by the passage of eons of feet, which led up into the Southwest Range of the Berenhall. This was the domain of the Pukkte and her Pukktas, and it was here he must once again seek the answers, the Orkkta, to the three great questions his People had asked for tens of thousands of years.

"Who bred us and what is our fate?"

"Who bred the Other, the newmen, and what is his fate?"

"How can we restore Harmony and Balance to the world?"

Chapter 16

Manahattan

March, 2001CE

"Does Traktor drive you around all the time like this?"

"He's not driving me around, he's driving you around. I'm just here for the ride. Like I said, you're higher up the food chain than I am".

"That's pretty cool. Does that mean I'm like a prince or something, because the Beren's my father?"

"Don't get too mikkta for your robes, Mikin. You've got lots of competition. The Beren has at least 80 sons that I know of. All of them your half-brothers, including my father. And all of you theoretically have an equal chance of succeeding Kan (Dokkta u a Beren).

"What's that you said?"

"Dokkta u a Beren. 'Good health to the Beren'. Kan's over 100, but he's got lots of good years left, if he doesn't get Pekkta from the stress. He's had more to do in his reign than any Beren since Erik 52 killed his father Lodwik 23"

"He killed his father!?"

"It was a Tukkta. A righteous extermination. A Beren's got to do what a Beren's got to do. Anyway, your chances of succeeding to the Hall are dependent on the age you are when Kan wears out (Dokkta u a Beren). The Pukkte like the heir Principio to be between 30 and 50 when he succeeds. That's why the Beren keeps makkt…making sons all his life, so there'll be a good sized batch of the appropriate age to choose from when the time comes"

"You mean his oldest son doesn't just take over?"

"Ber, no! The age we live to, the new Beren would be an old man if we did it that way. No, when the Beren wears out and he's ready to rest, the Pukkte gather together all his sons who are the right age and choose which one will be the next Beren. Of course, we always have a fall-back heir, the heir Principio, who's always on call in case the Beren gets run over by a truck unexpectedly. My father is the Heir Principio now, but he's 55 so he's just holding the office for the next one, so to speak. It'll probably be Tarkin. He's very popular at the Berenhall. Real superstar".

Val didn't think Oto was one of Tarkin's fans. "That's kind of tough on your dad, isn't it? To be first in line and then be passed over for a younger guy?"

"Its his task. We all have our tasks"

"Yeah. Dikkt u Dikkta"

"You learn fast"

"I guess it's OK knowing there's always a plan to tell you what to do and where to go"

"The Plan can't tell you how to be good. How to Sikkt. You have to learn that yourself".

"Anyway, that means I could make Heir Principio around…2020, when the Beren's about…125"

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Mankin. Sorry, I mean Uncle Val".

"How do the Pukktas choose the next Beren?"

"Oh, they know. They've known these kids all their lives. It helps if you're an Abakkator, a Kaskkator or a Kwikkator, or a Bakkator, especially. Mostly, it's just, I don't know the best word in English. Sik e Trok, harmony and balance. Character, I guess. This Beren, Kan 367, trained as an Akkator, which isn't exactly a requisite for running a species. Actually, I might be wrong, endurance might be the only requisite. Being Beren hasn't been fun for the last thousand years or so".

"So what's an Akktor? And the other things you said?"

"An Akkator. There's a big difference. Add the "a" and the word gets bigger, tougher. Akktor is someone in a bath, Akka, and it mostly means bathing or being in a pool. Akkator is a mover through water, swimmer, and to us, swimming means thousands of miles".

"How the fu…How the fik do you swim a thousand miles?"

"You're buoyant, strong, tireless to all intents and purposes. There's lot's to eat in the ocean, and it's surprisingly easy to catch, if you're quick. There's more to it than that, of course. Years of training, Tekka, right from about 6 years old, too. But that's the basis. I don't know much more than that, I'm not an Akkator. Let's see. Abakkator is a, well, a speedcounter, in her head. Lightning calculations of huge numbers all in a flash. From the word 'Abakkt'. To calculate or compute".

"Like an abacus?"

"It's where the newman got the word. There are lots of Beren words in languages around the world. Si, for instance. Harmony, goodness, the future. But it's also our word for yes. The Spanish still use it for yes, but they've forgotten all the other meanings. Kronik is our word for counting time. It survives all over Europe, meaning time. Fik you know about"

"Anyway, Kaskkator is a speedthinker, like an Abakkator, but with concepts, or deductions from limited facts, instead of numbers. A Kwikkator is someone who's trained from a kid to move at neural speed. I mean, I'm quick, and you're going to be quick in a couple of years, but these guys are seriously quick, like they can come up and slap you and split, and all you'll see is a blur"

"A Bakkator is probably the rarest and most important skill you can train for. He or she is a seer, someone who has visions and sees prophecy, and is trained to record and interpret it. That's called unfolding, or Filikkte. Julia's got Bakkt, inseeing skills, but she didn't train. The other really rare one is Trokkator, a Great Balancer. That's really hard to describe when you don't speak Beren yet. There are some people who can…balance things. They bring balance to a room, or a situation, or sometimes to a People. With balance, Tro, comes harmony, Si. People with this skill, this Te, are very important when things get dangerously imbalanced, and spinning out of control".

"How do I sign up for training? Or am I too old now?". Once again Oto caught the whiff of regret from Val, that he hadn't grown up among his own.

"You don't sign up. The Pukkta picks you, based on some tests she does, starting when you're still a baby. Don't worry, though, I'm pretty sure you're some kind of Kaskkator, and if you've got the Te, you'll learn to use it. They're all part of the same thing, all these…Ka…neural abilities. We think the newmen could learn out how to use their Ka, with a couple of thousand years of training. One of our biggest long-term worries is that they'll figure out how on their own. We kind of keep an eye on that".

"You've got spies all over the world, don't you"

"Not really spies. Just families. Berenhomes, or Firkka, in every city or town in the world. Listen to me now carefully. Check any phone directory anywhere in the world, and there'll be a listing for "Bear Insurance". It might be in English, but it'll probably be the word for bear in the language of the country. In languages which don't have a word for bear, it's called "Mother Insurance". You call that number, or visit that address, if it's a place without phones. You call, or knock, and ask for Mr. Ludwig. They'll say Mr. Ludwig isn't available and they'll ask if there's anything that they can do to help. They'll ask you this three times in total, and each time, you say something like, "No, I'm sorry, but I really have to speak with Mr. Ludwig personally". Be nice. These people are just doing their task. Have you got this?"

"Mr. Ludwig three times. Bear Insurance. If there's no word for bear, Mother Insurance".

"Don't get cocky. After all that, they'll tell you Mr. Ludwig has left the firm, and his replacement is a Mr. Something or other. They'll give you a telephone number for him, with a dash in it. If it's a place with no phones, you're probably in the Firkka already and they'll ask you to wait. Otherwise, ignore the Mr. The something or other part of the name is a street in the place or town you are in.  The number that begins with the second digit of the telephone number and ends with dash is the street address. Go to that place."

"You'll know it's a Berenhome, or Firkka, because somewhere out front will be the Beren symbol, ÄIt won't be very obvious, but you won't miss it if you're looking for it. If it's turned 45 degrees, though, like a cross in a circle…". He drew in the air again, "…you should walk on by and chill. Come back a couple of hours later and check. You'll remember all this? Every Beren child knows it".

"You want me to be cocky again?"

"Yes, please".

"OK. Mr. Ludwig three times, Bear Insurance, or Mother Insurance, last name is the street name, second digit to the dash is the address, if we got a an "x" in a circle it's cool, if it's a cross in a circle, chill. Happy?"

Oto looked at him gravely. "Very".

They pulled up to Oto's building. Kayley August was standing out front, scanning the sidewalk.

"The garage, I think, Traktor".

The Cadillac cruised by the building, formidably anonymous in it's tinted glass. They cruised round the corner on to 83rd, turned into the building's parkade and drove straight through the manned checkpoint. The uniformed guard waved.

Traktor drove the SUV down the ramp, past three floors of tenant parking to the bottom of the parkade. He drove to the end towards a dusty door marked "utilities". It opened smoothly and silently to let them pass, and dropped again. The lights came on and Val was in wonderland.

He liked gear, and he liked cars, even though he wasn't a nut or anything. He knew a lot about them, though, and had a good eye. This 'garage' was an eyeful.

The GMC van was there (and two others like it), as well as the Audi A8 Quattro Wagon, parked beside its identical mate. Two black Volvo C70 Cross Country wagons with the ubiquitous tinted windows were parked by the Audis. A late model Suburban in black with tinted windows, which Val divined was the predecessor to the Escalade, was parked next to a complete, and sparkling clean, service bay, with a lift and full diagnostics. GMC parts hung in racks on the walls. This was clearly Traktor's domain, and Val could sense the big Beren's pride at showing it to him.

The modern cars all seemed to be black. There was a black Audi TT coupe with red leather upholstery in the corner that he rushed over to look at. Oto followed him.

"That's my car. We have an interest in Audi, we get them straight from the factory. You'd like it, it's kind of trick. I don't drive it much in the city".

"Where do you drive it?"

"Up the Taconic Parkway at night. The Catskills. If we have the time, we'll go up to West Point together, on the other side. That's a great drive".

Val looked around. A new Bristol Blenheim 3 in rich, deep red. A much older Bristol 407, looking fresh from the showroom. Next to the 407 was an empty parking space. On the wall above hung a framed rendering of the 2002 Bristol Fighter, with a legend inscribed below: "Dignified Express Travel For Two Six Foot Persons And Their Luggage - August 3, 2002CE".

"Wiktor likes Bristols" said Oto.

A Jaguar D Type in racing trim, also in deep rich red, parked next to a Jaguar 420, in black, with the red leather upholstery. An immaculate  glossy black 1959 Cadillac Type 62 Limousine with the landau roof in the deep, rich red gleamed in the green-shaded ceiling lamps.

On the other side of the service bay, two Rolls-Royces, both from the late thirties, when they looked their best, before they got bloated. One was the familiar rich dark red and the other was, surprisingly, green. There was a 1945 Lincoln Continental, black, identical to the 1940, but very rare. Then he saw something completely new to him. A 1921 Ford Model T Limousine, as long as a hearse and twice as black, with black silk-fringed pull-down drapes in the rear windows and a small coat of arms on the door.

"We did things with a bit more style back then" Oto remarked, ruefully. "Nowadays we try not to draw that much attention to ourselves. Attempted kidnappings can be so messy, especially when you have to kill the attempted kidnappers".

Val shot him a glance to see if he was joking. Oto smiled at him and he couldn't tell.

"Come on. Upstairs. You'll have time to drool on the cars later"

"She's waiting to see you, isn't she?"

"Yes. And I don't think she's happy".

"Why didn't she phone?"

"Like I said. Not happy".

"Well, then I'll leave you two guys to it. Maybe Livia's back". He brightened at the prospect.

"Nothing doing, Uncle Val. You're coming up there with me. You’re my cover, my Filikke. You're as deep in this as I am now".

They got in the service lift and headed for the lobby, four floors up.

Chapter 17

The Berenhall

March, 2001CE

The Pukkte of All the People has mustered almost all her shrewdly hoarded strength to recieve the Beren in person, rather than hear his concerns through the intermediary of one of her makin acolytes. She had relied on the judgement of others, and of her forebears for many years now, for she was tired and very old at 212. She relied on the judgement of others for most matters, those that dealt with questions of ritual and ancient precedence. But she had only relied on her own judgement, and had harboured her strength for years, to deal with any issue which touched on the central themes of the Dikkta, the leaving of the Berk. That was too important to leave to her makin, too important to leave to the great kuore of Pukktas over which she rarely presided anymore. Too important was it for her interests, and the people's, to be represented in the Kalakkta by Wiktoriana Pukkta Principio, her successor. And so, she clung to her task, long after her allotted span had started to wane and, in her determination to maintain balance, begins to be dektrok, out of balance.

And so she settled imperceptibly in her motorized wheelchair, allowed a young pukka to twitch her robe more discreetly over her withered legs, lifted her finger at the makin to leave and with her other hand, twitched the Beren forward. She nodded imperceptibly and he sat on a stool placed at her left ear.

"Harmony and Balance to you in full measure, Pukkte"

"And to you Beren" Her voice was a whisper.

"I saw the Amber Ship land again, Pukkte, but this time I saw it from a different place. I looked around. It doesn't land on Titan. I think it's landing on Terra. A hotter place, yes, but I think it's landing below the Berenberg"

"Here? The Return?" Her whisper sharpened with interest.

"These watchers, us, me, we were not Beren, we were…firstmen. We had the supraorbital prominence and rugosity, and the morphology was extremely endomorphic. The apparent toolset was Acheulian, the clothing was pre-loom, pre-fabric. It was a pre-social primitive mid- to upper pleistocene environment"

"It is impossible. You have tapped the well of your ancestors, and they are living again through your dreams of the great ships. Be pakkt, Beren. We must unfold this with subltety, but we must unfold it now"

"I will call Wiktoriana Pukkta from New York"

"The Pukkte Principio is subtle, yes, but we may need to take other actions before she may arrive. Will you not finally confirm Tarkin as your new heir and admit him to the Kalakkta? This will do much to forge the will, the Tokkte, of the People"

"Tarkin may wait longer to no harm. If this bakkta is a fundamental change in perspective, which is, I think the message of this vision, then a new perspective may be required. Tarkin makes a good heir, he would make a fine Heir Principio, I'm sure, but I don't think Tarkin will ever make a good Beren. He's too, Beren, too proud, too willing to stand his ground against all odds. Tarkin would lead us to mighty victories against the Huns, but those days will be, have been, aren't now. This has become more clear now. Makin!"

An acolyte appeared instantly from behind the hangings at the other end of the low, domed hall where the Pukkte received her supplicants.

"A v-link, please"

He turned to the Pukkte and whispered in her good ear "I would be very grateful, Pukkta, if you asked the Pukkte Principio to return to consult with you. I'm eager to hear your report on her thoughts"

The makin returned with a G4 Ibook™. The Beren balanced the deck on his knees. He typed in a string of letters and cleared a v-mail screen on the desktop. He typed in a short e-mail address and positioned the camera so his own image peered back from one corner of the screen. The screen cleared again, and a recorded video image of Wiktor Merro appeared.

"Hello, this is Wiktor Merro. I'm sorry I've missed your call, so I'll get back to you just as soon as I can".

"Berfikkte! My apologies, Pukkte. Wiktor, where the Ber are you? I want you to get back here, and bring Oto and Walerius with you. And the Pukkte has a message for Pukkta Wiktoriana"

He gently held the Ibook™ in front of the Pukkte, the camera centred on her reluctant, tiny face. He pointed at the tiny microphone hole below the keyboard, and placed it a few inches from her mouth.

"The Pukkte asks that her sister return to Berenberg to assist in our deliberations" she whispered, almost inaudibly.

Kan turned the screen and camera back to face himself.

"I'm sending the Global Express to Teterboro from London. Be ready to leave in 24 hours. Call Torkin for anything else you might need. I'll see you soon, old friend. Answer your v-mail next time"

He closed the Ibook™ and gave it to the makin.

"Copy that to Torkin Torkinson. Pukkte, please call a full sitting of the Kalakkta for a week tomorrow. I think we need to see every Baron there"

This was said loud enough for the makin to hear, and Kan knew it would be done, regardless of the reluctance of the Pukkte. The entire People would help him unfold this new perspective on the ancient vision that had guided them for so long.

He hadn't read the Book of Ezekiel in thirty or forty years. Making a deep obeisance to the Pukkte, he turned to walk the long journey to the Beren's apartments in the north towers, far on the other side of the Great Hall, to do some reading before bed.

Chapter 18

Manhattan

March, 2001CE

"It was in the water, wasn't it. You and your 'assistant' never touched it" Kayley almost spat the word 'assistant'.

"You think because you're obscenely rich, and because you have some kind of bogus diplomatic cover and because you'all…all of you are some kind of secret society, that you can drug me, stalk me, spy on me! What do you want?!" The last was almost a plea.

Oto waited patiently as Kayley finished screaming at him, point blank, in the lobby of his own building. She had stalked right over the moment they had gotten out of the elevator. Val was hanging back and taking his cue from Oto.

"Kayley, this my…nephew, Val Berenson. Val, this is Kayley August"

Val had snorted briefly at 'nephew', but he came forward and extended his hand "I'm very pleased to meet you, Ms. August".

His grave courtesy coming on the heels of her outburst non-plussed Kayley enough to stop the flow of invective. Oto took his opportunity.

"What's the problem, Kayley? Did you find the Irish chambermaid? Or was it a footman? We should continue this upstairs at my place. Val and I were just going up now"

Oto glanced at the doorman, who had been waiting at a discreet distance. "That's fine, Perry, thanks"

Perry, a very beefy young man with dark red hair, walked over to the elevator bank, held a small metal disk against the button panel of the middle car and held the door open for them.

The tingling sensation returned, and Kayley moved towards the open elevator as if she expected herself to. As they rose in silence, the pressure on her chest eased a bit and she realized she didn't feel threatened. The anger had subsided enough into an urgent need for justification that Kayley noted there were no floor buttons on this car.

Val thought to himself that Oto, for all his modesty, appeared to have some skills, some Te, himself.

The elevator opened on his floor, and she was confronted by the wall-sized coloured chalk cartoon, drawn by Leonardo himself without assistants, for "The Last Supper". Here was all the detail, here were all the subtleties of glance and passion of gesture between the apostles and Jesus that are now lost to art history. The cartoon, last seen in the early sixteenth century in Bavaria, had been rumoured for centuries to exist in private hands, but no one had seen it. No one who wrote in international art journals, at least.

Kayley, the fight beginning to drain out of her, mustered enough dash to casually say "Nice picture".

"Family heirloom" said Oto, and laughed in a way that invited her to laugh with him.

He led Val and Kayley around the overpowering image and into the main salon. Kayley took in the view out over the park and started doing some lightning calculating.

Oto said "Assessed at $12 million last year, worth 16 on the market, the building's assessed at 160 million, but there's no market for buildings like this so I can't tell you what it would get in a sale. A lot. I assume?".

"Yes", she said simply. "What is this all about, Oto?"

"You. I'm fascinated by you. I have been for weeks. Come here, I'll show you".

He glanced at Val to include him, and led Kayley to his study. Val followed.

Oto opened the late mediaeval German armoire that housed his G4. He booted the second hard drive with the disk from his pocket. To Val's horror, he logged onto the button marked "Target". Val saw that Oto had rearranged the image files by time code. Val pointed to the screen, where the earliest of the archived video retrieval images flickered in freeze frame. It showed Kayley entering her apartment with couple of Dean & Deluca bags.

"See, April 21, 2001. That's when I started watching you. I'd seen you at 9W57 a couple of days earlier, just before the Easter Parade"

Val's jaw wanted to drop at this parade of lies, but he kept his counsel.

"When did you figure out I had tapped your camera?"

"Just last night. My security guy checked it for me".

"Why did he check it for you?" Oto looked at her closely.

She looked right back at him "I had a hunch".

"You trust your hunches?"

"I'd done some research on you and your long-lived family" Oto didn't bat an eye. "When I realized how long you'd been around and how many buildings you owned, I figured you might just be enough of a megalomaniac to spy on me. It was actually pretty obvious once I knew you owned my building"

"This has nothing to do with business, Kayley, I promise you, cross my heart. I think your deal could be a good deal if you shape it up, and I'll invest in it when you do, don't worry. No, I've been on your trail because I sensed something special about you the very first time I saw you on 57th. I really just wanted to get to know you better. But, you know, with my family connections, I have to be really careful. Maybe I'm a little socially awkward, I know it's not the best way to get to know someone, tapping their security cameras. It's not illegal, though".

She was almost ready to feel a little sorry for him, before he smiled and she came to her senses.

Val spoke up "Maybe I'd better go and see if…"

"No, Val, I'd like your help with this" Oto said companionably. "Val and I share everything, we're close. The point is, Kayley, I want to do business with you, and I think we can be successful together. But I'd also like to get to know you, socially, you know, and I think we can do that without interfering with our business relationship. Do you think we can do that?"

"Damn, she wished she could keep her head from tingling when she needed to be clear with Oto "I don't know, I guess we could try it…"

"Great. Have you called Kedrik Maktor at ABB Management yet?"

She hesitated "I was busy…doing research first"

"Very wise. Listen, why don't I speak to Kedrik for you, explain the deal. Now, it would probably help your cause with the union if you had a letter of intent from the bank promising conditional funding and a promise not to discuss the strike fund? I'll have Julia, no I'll have Livia Marktor prepare the letter for my signature tomorrow. I'll courier it over to you. As soon as you get a positive response from the union, give me a call at this number" He passed her a small card with his name and a single phone number on it. "We'll get together as soon as you call and get the ball rolling. In the meantime, do you mind if I give you a call at home some evening? I'd like to see "The Producers". It's in previews and the advance press is pretty snotty, but I remember the movie was a hoot"

She was at the elevator by this time, once more, unsure how she got there.

"We'll talk. Very soon, I promise" The door closed and all she knew was that she really, really hoped it would be soon.

She was out on Central Park West before she remembered that she never used the 57th street entrance to 9W57, it was too crowded with shoppers. She always left the building by the 58th street exit, or she had at least since Christmas.

Oto turned to Val. "I've gotta turn it down a bit. I'm going to have her jumping out of her knickers in public if I keep that up". He shook his head ruefully.

"Wow, Oto. You're…it's like you're a nuclear charm reactor. Is that a Te, a skill? What's it called"

"I told you, I'm a Fiktor. I'm really good at getting laid".

Chapter 19

Manhattan

March, 2001CE

Wiktoriana Pukkta turned from her titanium G4 PowerBook™ and looked out the window of her sewing room, which looked west over the park, almost straight at Oto's windows. This v-mail she had just been forwarded from her Sister Augusta, the Pukkte of All the People, had muddied waters which had not been clear before, and threatened to cause too many things to change too fast.

Her sewing room was furnished in a smallish but charming sutie of drawing room furniture Marie Antoinette had ordered made for the Petit Trianon, and then had never enjoyed, the G4 housed in a lacquer cabinet on the Bouillé table. She walked across the 16th century silk carpet to the window and looked out west over the Park. She could see Oto's building in the twilight, silhouetted against the west side skyline. Oto wouldn't want to leave, and the child wasn't ready to. The v-mail directly from the Pukkte of all the people had told her much, that the Beren had made her a promise, that she no longer had the strength to resist his blandishments and that a generational shift was finally occuring on the Berenberg.

Kan's reign had been productive for the Beren, their riches had doubled, they had completed the transition to an industrialized people and the population had grown slightly. New alliances had been forged with the other Beren peoples in Georgia and Romania, and a new people was slowly developing among the Basque.

He and his closest advisors, led by Torkin Torkinson, had always hewed to a centrist-right line in European affairs, and a paternalistic one in the hearths of the Berenhall. The People's needs were always served and the high, that is, non-interventionist road, was taken in interactions with newmen. This cautious non-interference was a trait bred into the Beren by long centuries of bad experiences. These had culminated around 1350CE, when a schism occurred between the Council (Kalakkta) and a breakaway group, including the Heir Principio, called the Elect.

The Council wanted to maintain the arm's length relationship with the newmen that had worked best for thousands of years, characterized by occasional revelations to selected important men. The Elect wanted to train and enlighten a cadre of newmen, specially chosen for their wisdom, and help usher in a new era of harmony. They argued the newmen had reached a sufficiently advanced stage of technology to be taught the Beren ways. The Council, wuich included, of course, the Beren, the Pukkte of all the People and the Consort, didn't agree.

In 1462, the Kan was killed by his son, in a ritual Tuk carried out on orders of the Kalakkta. The Elect were also killed and the schism ceased to exist, for schism is fatal to the Beren. All Beren since carry the memory of the consequence of large scale fracture, and it is avoided.

Thus, generational change in the Beren power structure is gradual, and not rife with tension. Generations come and go, knowing they will have their chance at power, if not rule, because of the age-focused hierarchy of Beren tasks. Beren youth have fun as they look forward to power, from which perch they contemplate influence, and finally reverence. In a long Beren lifetime, there is much to look forward to.

However, Kan's generation, and those just somewhat younger, in their 60s, had run things for a longish time, and also, no cliché, during a time of greater change than even the Beren had ever seen.

The Greatmother knew of Tarkin's ambition to be Heir Principio, and she knew of a half a hundred important people, including the Pukkte of all the People, who agreed with him. Tarkin was 35, the son of Kan by Gloriana Torkin, old Torkinson's daughter. He was strong, able, cheerful, well-liked, good natured and ferociously intelligent. He was the perfect Beren specimen, in fact, and was in demand as a first father. He commanded the allegiance (slavish devotion, actually), of a disparate group of people, from the toughs who hung at the fringes of the great houses, the young turks, a coterie of influential mothers and greatmothers, including, of course, the Pukkte, a group of senior military and administrative officials with many favours to grant and, not the least important, the Consort, his mother Gloriana.

The Greatmother reflected on the increase in the fortunes of the Torkin family in two generations. From a family of craftsmen to the Mothers of Heirs and Berens. Torkinson himself was unpositioned on the issue of Tarkin; hed had to be as the Beren's chief adviser and the Eldest of the People. But it was no secret that the Torkins had long been a family with Elect sympathies.

The schism persisted as contoversy, passed down through generations, over whom among the newmen to initiate, and how much to tell them. Elect families tended to favour leaders, kings and lots of them, while the Council families preferred fewer or none. Elect families saw that the world had changed to such a different place, and the Beren wealth was now so great, that they could safely reveal themselves and take their places as leaders of men. The Council families didn't want to be leaders of newmen, they wanted to be rid of them, and saw the Dikkta as the safest and best way to that end.

Most of all, the Elect wanted to revenge the tragedy of the Troubles, by using their power and wealth to create a technologically and politically inferior people out of the newmen. The Pukkta saw this well, as did others, though they didn't mention it.

These were the forces that would be at play in the Great Council. This was the first to be called in forty years, since the launch of Mercury I. Family politics which had been changing and growing for a generation would be in the mix, as well as the initail wing-stretching Tarkin would be trying. His power bloc had never been offically tested. Tarkin, she knew, favoured a 'muscular' Beren presence in the world, with a doctrine of direct and necessary action to advance the aims of the Dikkta. While not Elect as such, his aims and theirs coincided as far as bringing more newmen expertise into the Beren space program as an emergency measure. This was something the Pukkta was dead set against, and in this she was supported by Wiktor and, she thought, the Beren. Now she was no longer sure.

Chapter 20

Manhattan

March 2001CE

They were sharing a half bottle of Chateau Petrus 1990 after Kayley had left, when Oto had turned to Val and said frankly "I need to get naked with her. I have to find out if her carpet matches the drapes". He blew smoke rings at the ceiling from a Montecristo purito.

"What?"

"You know, does the bush match the bean. There's something very odd about her"

"I still don't get it"

"Well, I can't explain it any more detail without being extremely rude. Ask Livia. In her case, the answer's yes". The Winkin came in and whispered to Oto.

"That's it. I'm in shit now. The Pukkta's called me to a crash meeting at her place. Wiktor too, and Julia, so it's something important. Gotta run. Have fun shtupping my sister"

He didn't return that evening for dinner. Val and Livia, who arrived after Oto had left, had the suite to themselves. They wasted no time, although Livia insisted he eat a very hearty meal first.

Later that night, Val brought it up with Livia. They had been fikking for five hours straight, and were resting a bit before Livia showed him some brand new tricks, known only to the Beren. They lay naked on the wide canopied bed. Val's head was in Livia's lap, rising and falling with the rhythm of her breath. He looked up through the frame of her breasts at her gravely smiling face, as though watching a sunset between hilltops. She twirled her fingers in his flame red hair.

"Oto said something to me about wanting to know if someone's carpet matched their drapes. What does he mean?"

"Oto can be so jejeune, sometimes" sighed his teenaged sister. "You're lying on the carpet, you're looking at the drapes. Do they match?"

Val raised his head and looked up and down the length of her splendid, tightly-knit ivory body. "I get it. Yes they do match".

"Always a perfect match if you're a Beren. Sometimes, that Oto, I swear".

"I like him a lot"

"Of course, what's not to like? He's smart, kind, generous, funny, sweet, cute as a puppy. Lots of people think he and Julia are going to settle down as Kunaktors, but I get the feeling he's waiting for someone else"

A newman, thought Val to himself. "Do people become Kunaktors for life?"

"Life is a long time. It depends on your Si e Tro, your harmony and balance together.

"It all comes down to how the three virtues combine. If strong harmony and balance (like the Mother) mates with weak harmony and strong balance, the brood is Strong balanced but deficient in Harmony. That's us, the Beren. We were born of the rape of our Mother the Bear, who's got strong balance and harmony, by the Sun, who is strong in balance but lacking in harmony. We are the brood of that mating, and we don't have perfect harmony. This is what we're always looking for, the root of all the questions we ask. That's the Orkkt, the answer.

"Anyway, we think the Sun then raped his sister, the serpent, who is weak in harmony and balance. The brood was the newmen, with average balance and almost no harmony. That's why they're so hard to deal with. It's simple Mendelian genetics. Everything comes down to genetics. Did you get that in your school?"

"Anyway, if two people complement each other, and don't compete but make a 'more' person, a Konkkta, Kunaktors can last a long time. Ordwik and Linka were Kunaktors for almost 500 years during The Troubles, and their…love, their Pa, saved the People in a very dodgy time"

"The Troubles?"

"27,000 years ago. We almost got wiped out. The People were down to less than 5000, hiding out in the Alps and in Georgia".

"Like Atlanta?"

"No, Georgia in Russia. Oto's right, you don't know anything about geography. You do know that's like not knowing what the rug in your Hall looks like, don't you, not knowing geography? Geography is like the anatomy of the Mother. You have to know it. In the Caucasus mountains. There's a whole People there, too. They're pretty scary. Anyway, Ordwik was the Beren for over 400 years, because he was strong and wise, and the people needed him. He just didn't wear out for almost 500 years, because his task was to stay. And Linka stayed with him, she loved him and he loved her. And they fikked like crazy the whole time and made the People happy.

Ordwik and Linka began the Great Retreat, when the Beren all over the Berk, the world came to the Berenberg. That's when it became home to all the People. Almost all the Beren from then on were born in the Berenberg. I was, you were, Oto was, Julia, Arktor, the Pukkta".

"Wiktor? Traktor?"

"Wiktor for sure, I'm not sure about Traktor. He might have been born a Biryani".

"A what?"

"The Al Biryani are another People, not many of them, in Syria, in the mountains. Then there are the Birkun in Georgia and the Biran in Romania, also not many. Then there's the Baska in Spain, but they're not really a people, not  yet. They might be in a couple of thousand years, if the Makkte, goes right"

"Dikkt u Dikkta"

"Val, that is so cool. I'm going to lick you all over, so lie down and act like ice cream"

Val lay back in the warm sweet fur of her Kuni, raised his eyes to the canopy and whispered "Thank you, Mother, for this. I promise, I owe you big time"

•           •           •

Val wasn't winded, but rest was sweet too. He had a feeling it wasn't this good for newmen and, although he had no way of knowing the truth, he was right. His smooth groin, with no scrotal sac and the fat Beren penis protruding erect from slightly higher up his abdomen, coupled with the slight forward tilt and longer entry of his partner's kuni offered the kind of penetration and purchase which no newman could ever know. The pelvic rocking which is so important to sustained continuous orgasm came naturally to the Beren; it was only practiced among a few highly-trained newmen yogis, and their achievements were often spurned by their race.

"You said that Ordwik didn't wear out for 500 years. What does that mean? I heard Oto say it, too. Is it when we die?"

"All this history and biology, little Tekin! Don't you want to fik some more?"

"In a minute. What happens when a Beren dies?"

"He wears out. Gets Pekkt. It's like getting stringy and faded and Dekwi, not strong anymore. You lose your Wi, or lifestrength. It happens at the end of your allotted span, when your task is over".

"What happens then?"

"It depends. If you're the Beren, there's a huge ceremony and they cut your head off and dry it and hang it in the Berenhall". Val winced, but was still. " If you're one of the Barons, a Berka, they have the same ceremony, but they hang your head in the clan Hall. The rest of us just go to sleep. Some still do it the old way. They'll go and find a cave, or Kun, and bury themselves in it, naked the way they were born, and go to sleep. Most return to the Berenberg and sleep in one of the Wombs of the Dead, the Kuntu, under the Hall".

"And after they go to sleep?" Val was fishing for hints of immortality, as if all he had learned so far was not enough.

"We return to the Long Lawns"

The look on Livia's bright, smart young face was one of such earnest and passionate longing, Val was taken aback. "Is that good?"

"It's the best ever. That's when you're really living, and you can remember all your other lives as well, not just the one you're in. It's like…superliving, or all-living. Sirk, it's called, or Siwi, goodlife or yeslife. It's always late afternoon, the Beren hour, during the day and at night, our Father the moon always shines. The Long Lawns are on a plain that goes forever. It's got beautiful creeks and rivers crossing it, and a great river".

"There are groves and stands of beautiful tall trees everywhere, and lawns between the glades. The grass is so soft you sleep on it, and the temperature is always mild. There are , like, pavilions and little temples to the Mother everywhere, and these are always freshly set with feasts, Boskkta, of wonderful food and wine. Men can fight all day long if they want and never get hurt, and you can talk and Tullak, or philosophize all day, and never learn the Orkkta. There's lots of fikking and it's the best fikking you can imagine"

Val's head spun at the thought.

"Every Beren who ever lived is there, except those who are back on the Berk for their tasks. If you wanted to find Oto the First Beren, or your namesake, General Walerius, you could. It might take you thousands of years to find them, but you'd meet lots of interesting people while you were searching. The Mother comes at night, and passes through the groves to watch her children as they sleep. It's all harmony and all balance, and all of us want to return for good".

"Why don't you just stay there, and never leave" breathed Val, his eyes shining.

"You have to come back here to the Berk, to see how much you learned in the Lawns. Until you lead an absolutely good, no-fuckup life in the Berk, you'll always keep returning here to learn more. The better you get at life, though, the longer you get to stay in the Long Lawns before you return here again. The whole point is, your Ka, your inner spirit, is awake in the Long Lawns, it's aware. You can remember every life you ever lived, and learn from all of them, how to be good, how to Sikkt. Eventually your Ka gets the message and helps your tokkta, your outer spirit, your everyday consciousness, do the right thing without having to remember all your past lives first".

"When we all get there, when every Beren earns the right to stay forever in the Long Lawns, then we all become Sirkkator and the Berk comes to an end. No more world as we know it. Fortunately, it's not going to happen tonight".

She wrapped her strong, fragrant thighs around his ears. "Time to play 'Kiss the Kuni', little Mankin".

Somehow Val didn't mind being called that, the way Livia said it.

Chapter 21

Manhattan

March, 2001CE

When Val woke up that morning, he realized why Beren time runs later than newman time. Beren liked to fik all night, and sleep in the morning. They worked the rest of the day, then feasted before retiring to fik again. As he sat down to smoked meat, cold flank steak, beef sausage, four eggs, crusty bread and orange juice which the Arkin thoughfully produced the moment he poked his head in the salon, Val realized he was going to have to beef up if he wanted to stay friends with Livia.

Later that morning, he had his first session with Julia's father, whom Val still thought of as Dr. Wiktor. Val was at the desk in Oto's study, with a pad of legal paper in front of him. Dr. Wiktor was observing a nesting pair of peregrine falcons in their messy twig castle tucked into one of the rooftop crags of the Dakota. He peered for a long moment through the Celestron star scope, then looked at Val.

"We'll begin at the very beginning. We'll talk about how the two worlds, the Berk and the Sirk, are made, and what they are made of".

"First, and above all, The three virtues; Harmony, Balance and Strength, or Wi. The third virtue modifies the other two, so that you may have strong harmony or weak harmony and strong balance or weak balance. All things are the way they are because of the combination of harmony and balance, and the strength of each, which they embody".

"Next, the three realms. These describe the existence and beingness, Ek, of everything. How a thing is is determined by the realms it lies in. They are; space (or mass or volume), time and speed (or velocity). Once again, the third, speed, moderates the other two. So that you may have slow or fast space, and you may have slow or fast time. Slow is the realm of infinity and fast is the realm of simultaneity, of everything happening at once. The slowest time is infinitely long, the fastest time doesn't exist at all. By the same token, the slowest space is infinite space, the fastest space takes up no space at all". He turned back to the telescope.

"Then, the four domains, of which everything is physically made. These domains determine the appearance, the Bakka, of everything, and are deeply intertwined with the three virtues. You will be familiar with the four domains, for they are earth, fire, air and water. Each is a subtle combination of virtues and realms. Gold for instance can be described as strong in harmony (like the earth) and strong in balance (like fire) and slow in time (near infinite in it's durability) and somewhat faster in space (because there is not much of it). It is a combination of earth and fire".

Finally, the three spheres, the ways we ourselves interact with the worlds, both the Berk and the Long Lawns. The three spheres are the inner sphere, your 'surconcscious', governed by your "Ka", or inner spirit, the central sphere, your 'everyday' conscious or "Ek" which is your spirit of being, and your outer conscious, your communal Beren consciousness, or "Yok", in which all the dreams of your race flow".

"There she goes, she's hunting squirrels in the park. See her?" Val looked up to see a steel grey bullet of feathers wheel by the broad window, then descend in a screaming stoop across Central Park West towards the Sheep Meadow.

"And of course, we live in two worlds, just to round the number of Ekkesa, sacred things that are, to 15. We live here in the Berk for a time, until our task is done, then we return to the Sirk to await our next task.

"This is a lot of stuff to catch up on. Is there a book? We didn't take mythology".

Wiktor turned from the Celestron and looked at Val. "This isn't mythology, this is physics. Mythology's next week".

"That's physics? That's great! I actually knew what you were talking about, it made sense! Physics never made sense to me in school!"

"That's because they were teaching you nonsense. Nonsense never makes sense. It's right there in its name - non-sense. Most things are that simple when you get to the smallest part of them".

"That's what Liv…someone said to me last night, that it's all simple genetics, everything".

"My grandaughter is a very wise woman for her age, and will make a famous Makkator if she chooses. She has other skills too" he smiled at Val.

The blush started creeping out towards Val's ears and he looked around for something, anything, to distract attention from himself.

Wiktor asked curiously "Are you feeling alright?"

"Uh…yeah, sure. Why, what's wrong?"

"You have turned a very attractive shade of red. The same colour as your hair, in fact".

"It's just…" He looked at Wiktor, who was still smiling kindly at him. He couldn't lie, could he?

"It's called blushing, turning red. I do it when I get embarrassed". He hoped Wiktor would leave it at that.

"Embarrassed? About fikking with my granddaughter? There's nothing embarrassing about that! I for one would be embarrassed if you weren't fikking with her. So would she, I'm sure".

Try as he could, Val couldn't make himself feel these words coming out of the dignified Tekkator's mouth were normal conversation.

"I'm aware of the curious attitudes your adoptive parents and the other newmen you grew up amongst have towards fikking, that it is secret and somehow shameful. This more than anything sets our two races apart. We embrace life and strength, and because we breed slowly, we have a great reverence and joy for the actions which make breeding possible"

"There is never any shame in anything as good, as sik as fikking. Evil and guilt are foreign concepts to us, which is why I am still curious when I see someone blushing"

"Nothing is evil?"

"Nothing a Beren can do is evil. Some things might be…untasteful, like rolling yourself in shit, Ko, or fikking with a Tut, a corpse, but fikking in general, no. Fikking is like breathing to us, and a Beren who doesn't fik frequently risks wearing out sooner than his allotted span allows. This would be an insult to the Mother. So we fik all we can, and then some more. There is a saying: The only time a Beren thinks about fikking is when he's not fikking".

"Is there any age when a Beren is too young for fikking?"

"If you want to, you're ready. No one fiks against their will".

"They do in my town. It's called rape".

"That is not fikking. That is Dekomak, unhuman. The Dekoma are Tukkt, exterminated".

"Killed? For rape".

"No, they are exterminated for becoming unhuman. You would destroy a snake that threatened your child, wouldn't you? Or a scorpion which wanted to kill you? So we destroy vermin. Justice and mercy is only for the Omak, humans". Wiktor turned back to the telescope.

Do you mind if I ask you another question?"

"No, of course not"

"Why do you like Bristols so much?"

"The low end torque, the soundproofing and the trunk" answered Wiktor, without dropping a beat. "The Blenheim pulls over 500 pound feet at 1700 RPM. You can pass more quickly at 90 than most people can at 30. They're like us that way. Quite a few of us drive them".

"Do you own the company?"

"I  don't. We  have influence with the management. Back to the virtues. I'm not that easily distracted". He turned to Val again, and started sketching in the air.

"The three virtues meet on three axes, x, y and z, like a three dimensional graph. Think of harmony as the z axis, tall or short harmony. The x axis is balance, narrow or wide balance. Strength is the y axis, the dependant variable which modifies the other two. Think of it as deep strength or shallow strength. Are you going to be able to follow this?"

"I'm doing OK, go on", he said, drawing and labeling this graph on the pad in front of him.

"Strength is what it is. Harmony is what you would call good, or goodness. Balance is what you would call stability. Some things, like Stalin's Russia in the fifties, were stable, but not good. Others, like ice cream, are good but not stable".

"Livia said us Beren have strong stability but not perfect harmony, while the newmen just have average stability and not much harmony".

"Ah, my granddaughter has me in her debt, for she has prepared you well. This is correct. Why do you think we have these characteristics?"

"Because the Mother was raped by the Sun?" Val did not even feel odd saying these outlandish words, his transition from newman to Beren was so far along.

"You are learning more than fikking at night. This is good. You have your graph, so you know how strong and weak harmony and balance combine to determine the essential nature of things. Now draw four circles across the top of the next page. The first, on the left, is the Mother. She is the Bear, and she embodies the earth, strong in both harmony and balance, solid. The next circle is our father, the moon, who embodies the air, strong in harmony but weak in balance, like the air we breathe. He is insubstantial. The next circle is the Sun, the Son, strong in balance but weak in harmony, like the fire he embodies. He is less solid than the earth, but more so than air. The last circle to the right is the Serpent, the Daughter, sister to the Sun, weak in harmony and balance, like the water she embodies. She is fluid like the air. These are your knights and bishops, they will determine the rest of the game"

"Shouldn't the mother be the queen and the moon the king?"

"Don't be smart. At first, our Mother was alone, and longed for companionship, so She made our father the moon, and gave him the skies to rule, for it was always night then. But the moon, while strong in harmony, lacked in balance, and She was disappointed. She decided she must try again.

Then She made herself a son, the Sun, but he was lacking in harmony, though strong in balance. Disappointed, she tried once more.

She made herself a daughter, the serpent, but she lacked both harmony and balance, and the Mother realized that even perfection could not create perfection. 

She decided she must populate the world that now existed with men, so She mated with the moon, and their brood was the firstmen, our predecessors the first humans. The newmen call them Homo Erectus. Unfortunately, the firstmen embodied the essential virtues of their two parents, which were…?"

"Strong harmony but weak balance".

"Yes. If you keep up this pace, we'll go up to Pound Ridge tomorrow and I'll let you drive the Blenheim. Now, something tragic happened. Though very harmonious, the firstmen lacked balance and were not at peace. The Sun grew jealous of his father the moon, and decided he must take over his place in the skies. So the sun and his sister, the serpent, devised a cruel plan. The serpent cried from the other side of the world to her father that she had been raped by the firstmen, although it was an Ekkte, a double play-acting, what the newmen would call a lie (remember, with no harmony and balance, lying was not beyond her). The moon flew into a terrible rage, because of his weak balance, and rushed to the other side of the world, leaving the skies empty"

"The sun crept into his father's domain, claimed his father's skies and then, in the most terrible act of the world's history, the son raped the Mother, and this is what we call 'The Rape Of The Sun', Dekomak u Solla. The brood of this mating is us, the Beren, the second men, and we are…?"

"Strong in balance, but not perfect in harmony".

"Good. Now, in his rage, the moon slew the firstmen, all of them. This was around a kronikktu and half of years ago, just after we were born. A Kronikktu is a hundred millennia of years. After this slaughter, in his bloodlust, the serpent had seduced her father the moon, and the brood of their mating was the nomen, who have…"

"…Average harmony, no balance at all. Who are they?"

"They're the…nomen, the men who aren't. Shades, wraiths, what you'd call ghosts".

"You mean they're dead people?"

"Gracious Mother, no, they've never lived, really. They're a combination of water and air. No solidity at all. They have a half share of their father's harmony, so they aren't really much trouble, but they aren't much in general, so to speak. They gather wherever there's wikka, power. Battles, combats, raids, disasters are when you see them". The female falcon wheeled by the window again, a limp grey squirrel in her talons.

"Then the moon, realizing how he had been tricked by the daughter and the son, flew into another rage, because he lacked balance, and rushed around the world to slay the son. They warred over the skies for tens of Kronikkto and as the moon succeeded, the earth would grow cold, and the great ice sheets would envelop the valleys. And when the sun prevailed, the earth would warm and the ice would retreat and the Beren would farm the valleys and meadows once again. This is all documented, you understand, we did start writing 65,000 years ago.

Finally, the moon and the sun achieved an uneasy truce, mediated by the Mother, the Konkkator. The sun would rule the skies half the day, the Ya,  and the moon would rule the other half, the No, the night. Under this truce, the mother protected the Berk, and her Beren. Unknown to her, the son then mated with the daughter, breaking the taboo of Fikkta Pukka, incest, once again. The brood of this mating was the newmen, the third race of humans. And…"

"Sorry, I was just thinking of Robin and Janis. Uh, Average balance, no harmony. Whew, that's rough".

"As bad as it can get, fortunately. Even the Mother hasn't the Wikka to mate the serpent with herself"

"Is this physics or religion now?"

"Good Mother, we haven't even touched on religion. You will have to go to the Pukkta for that. Actually, we've covered basic physics with some paleontology, organic chemistry and geology thrown in. Not bad for the first morning". It was now about 3 PM.

" And now, if you don't mind Walerius, we'll pick this up again after lunch, at about…six. I have a luncheon engagement"

Val wondered who Wiktor was fikking

Chapter 22

Manhattan

March, 2001CE

Oto was busy all night long, but he wasn't having nearly the fun Val was.

He and Wiktor, and Julia and Arktor were esconced in the Pukkta's penthouse on 5th Avenue, just south of the Met. They had been in council, Kallaka, since late that afternoon, when Oto arrived from his apartment after the meeting with Kayley.

Both Oto and the Pukkta feel that the effort in North America demands their presence, and that the Beren's vision is just another ill-timed distraction from the Plan. Wiktor, however, is convinced that the Beren's Bakkta is an important revelation, and demands the consideration of the full Kalakkta. He knows the Beren personally better than any of them, and he is aware that Kan is deeper, and quieter in his counsel, than they suspect.

As young men, he and Kan, his cousin twice removed, were inseparable. He would often spot for Kan from a small Alden yawl as Kan practiced his long-distance endurance swims. Long into the North Atlantic nights they would talk, Kan's words being snatched away by the wind and Wiktor replying through a bullhorn. Wiktor knew that these solitary swimming marathons were where Kan had done some of his deepest thinking and connecting to the Mother, afloat there in her lifeblood. Wiktor knew what Oto had divined; that marathon swimming may be the best training possible for the job of running a species.

Wiktor knows for a fact what the others do not know for sure. Kan 367 is a very capable, insightful man, and his concerns are very rarely misplaced. He also knows that Kan's instincts are unerring when it comes to others' skills and suitability for their roles, and if Kan has decided he needs Oto and Val by his side, there is probably a very good reason for it.

He had once accompanied Kan in the Alden on a short swim from Jutland to Norfolk. This would not have been extraordinary except for the fact that the Battle of Jutland had been raging around them at the time, with long range artillery shells exploding off the bow and German U-Boats surfacing along their course. Kan explained later, as they warmed up over mulled ale in a pub in Great Yarmouth that he had felt he needed "a challenge, some distractions", because his swimming had become too routine. That voyage, taken mostly at night, had certainly been a challenge, but the Beren had emerged from it a better Akkator.

Julia and Arktor, as representatives of the youngest managing generation of Beren in the new world, were eager that Oto and the Pukkta (and Wiktor) should leave for Germany, as it would leave them with more freedom and responsibility (of which they were both capable).

This meant that, of the key decision-makers who would be affected, two did not wish to leave immediately, and three wished them to depart. That left only one voice to be heard - Val's. As a 12 year old Beren and the son of the Beren, he had the right to have input to this choice, and contribute his voice to the search for consensus. Oto secretly thought that Val might wish to stay in New York, as there was no need for Livia to fly to Germany, and, in fact, with so many others gone, her task was to stay in Manhattan.

After discussing the matter for several hours, and considering various interpretations of the Beren's Bakkta, it was decided that Val should consult with the Pukkta to determine his willingness to leave the only life he had ever known.

Now, it may seem odd that the Beren's express commands were discussed in this manner, as though compliance were not the only option, but this is the Beren way. No Beren will do anything against his will (nor would he be expected to) and no earthly force can make him do so. All Beren decisions of note are made by consensus, with the Beren's voice just the first among many.

It is a testament to the sagacity and insight of those trained to become Berens that almost all their fiats are ultimately obeyed, and quickly, but no Beren blindly follows orders, they are constitutionally incapable of it. While this can lead to messy decision-making and less than immediate response, it also means that when the Beren agree, they all agree in a big way, and things happen very fast and decisively indeed.

It is for this reason the People practice the Korwikkte, or great singing, before major enterprises. The hypnotic and mnemonic cues embedded in the sakas communicate and convince Berens of the rightness of their actions in a way mere words cannot, and once the singing is done, a thousand Beren will act and react as one.

"Alright, the Global Express will be fuelled and cleared for Berensdorf by noon tomorrow. If Val has agreed to come, we'll be on it then. If he is unsure, we'll hold the jet until he is sure. The great Kalakkta isn't for another 6 days anyway" Oto said.

"Yes, but his father might want to get to know him before the Kalakkta" interjected Julia.

"I've already kidnapped Val once. I'm not doing it again. Not so soon, anyway" Oto replied.

As the others were gathering to leave the Pukkta's penthouse, she drew Oto aside.

"The red haired newman kuna you found. Thank you, her genome is very interesting"

"Interesting? How? Is she…?"

"She is not entirely newman, for one thing. She has Beren blood, many generations back on her father's side"

"I knew it!"

"There is something else I can't identify just yet. It's almost as if she has Beren blood on both sides of her family, which is impossible, unless she is some kind of Beren-Ramsay cross-breed. You are aware of the significance of this. She could be Dekpuk, or worse. She could become a full Dekomak, unhuman, if she develops her skills. I want you to put her under full-time observation, learn everything you can of her background"

"I have already done so" answered Oto truthfully.

She looked at him closely and saw this was so. He looked straight back at her.

"You are a very clever man, Otin, too clever by half".

"Only by half, Pukkta? In another age…"

"In another age, Otin, we might all have been bombed into the stone age if the allies hadn't ended the war with Germany when they did. Will be, was, isn't now. Bring me Walerius".

Chapter 23

Manhattan

March, 2001CE

Oto came home shortly after Wiktor left. Val was waiting for them in the underground garage with Oto's Bodyguard, Wiki, a short densely-built woman with an extravagant figure and coppery short hair. Although this was the first time Val had met her, her fierce devotion to Oto was apparent.

As they waited for Traktor to fill up the Escalade from the private gas supply, Oto told Val about the DNA test, that Kayley could be a Ramsay. He looked crestfallen and genuinely confused.

Val wanted to cheer his friend up. "You stared down the Pukkta when she looked at you?"

"I thought, all I can do is tell the truth as loud as I can. So I just Bakkt me and Kayley fikking like crazy".

"You're crazy!"

"It worked. She knows my…reputation. All she saw was a red haired girl. I wasn't exactly envisioning Kayley's face. The Pukkta doesn't know what Kayley looks like. She knows she has red hair, but she doesn't know what colour red. She'll think she saw some Beren kuna I'm hot on. Not the Ramsaj".

"What's a Ramsaj?"

"Ramsay. It's spelled 'Ramsay', but we pronounce that Ramsaj. They're like the enemy, the black smokers in Waterworld" . Oto and Val agree that this is a film they both like, for the sailing, and the sense of being different. They agree that Kevin Costner does Beren very well.

"But I have a friend at school in Darien who's one, Duncan Ramsay".

"Your friend Duncan's father is not a nice man".

"Donuts Senior is great, he's cool. He takes me and Donuts sailing all the time, and takes us out for burgers".

"He's got good Ekkta, but he's not a nice man. He manufactures a defoliant chemical that is very popular in third world nations. They use it to exterminate all other plant and animal life in their indigenous forests before strip-logging them, so they can beat the tree huggers. We've shut down three of Duncan Ramsays's previous businesses, all equally despicable, but he always thinks up a new one. He is someone who had made an unhuman bargain with Dekkta Wikka, evil and misfortune, and he's been given his chances, he must be Tukkt. It's going to happen this week".

"You're going to kill Duncan's dad?"

"I'm not. His car will".

"His Ferrari? He drives Donuts around in the Ferrari".

"He will be alone in the car when it happens. We are not Dekoma. But if he gets the rear axle x-rayed between now and the weekend, I'll know who talked".

Val looked at Oto and realized he was deadly serious. This was the Berenin at work.

"In or out Val. This is how we do it. We've been doing it for tens of thousands of years".

"If I warned him, does that make me Dekomak, unhuman?"

"No. it makes you stupid, and it'll take you many more lives on the Berk before you can return to the Lawns forever, and they won't be happpy lives. Also, you'll never make heir and you'll probably pull duty running a Berenhome in Des Moines. Not fun"

Val thought about it and realized his life would be a long one. He'd have time to get used to this. He'd get used to other things too, he supposed, over the next two centuries.

"Did Duncan's dad kill anyone?"

"We don't care what the newman do to each other, that's their business. It's when they mess with us, or with the world, the Berk, that we intervene. He's an enemy to the Berk"

Oto was…grumpy, not cheerful, for the first time since Val had met him. He wanted desperately to make his nephew feel better.

"She didn't look evil to me, Oto. She yelled a lot, but she had a good reason to".

Oto laughed ruefully. "Yes, she did, didn't she. The problem is, she might be worse than just a Ramsaj. And it would all make sense".

"What do you mean worse?"

"Well, not all people named Ramsay are Dekpuk, unbred, and not all Dekpuk are named Ramsay, but the two coincide often enough that it's worth our while keeping tabs on them all, which we do".

"Our problem is that Ramsays don't all look the same, like we do. They look like all the other newmen, even though they all have a little bit of blue Beren blood in them. Once in a while, though, you get a genetic accident, a Ramsay who looks just like a Beren. Red hair, pale skin, deepset eyes that sparkle, everything, even their fikkas and kunis. I gotta get naked with her!"

Val noted that Oto got a little stiffer, a little more erect when he was talking about sex. His charming, sophisticated nephew really was, as he himself cheerfully admitted, just one big hard on.

"Anyway, Ramsays like this can turn out to be worse than Dekpuk. They can become Dekomak, unhuman, like your friend Donut's dad. They have all the Wi, the strength of a Beren, and all the Ka, they just don't know how to use it properly. They can be very destructive, all the same"

"You think Kayley's one of these super Ramsays?"

"I don't know, I haven't got enough information yet. I can't see what else the answer is. She's got Beren blood in her, that's for sure. It could be toxic, though, and I don't know how to find out".

"You told me that an unbroken line of males descended from a Beren mother and a newman father sometimes could produce a pure Beren kid".

"Yes, but only if one of these males is mated back to a Beren female. And Kayley's mother is not Beren, we know that. Besides, Kayley's a female, she can't carry the Beren male gene".

"Livia said everything comes down to simple genetics. I don't know much about genetics, but I know mutations do happen, sometimes over thousands of years. If her family has had Beren blood for a long time, couldn't the gene pattern or whatever have mutated?"

Oto looked at him for a long moment. "So you're not a Makkator, huh?. You could have fooled me".

Oto climbed in the SUV.. "Based on her name, August, from Aukustus the Emperor, I'd say her ancestors bred with the Beren about two thousand years ago, just around the beginning of the Common Era, in the Roman Empire somewhere. Is two thousand years long enough for a mutation to occur?"

"Let's check the internet"

"Indeed, Uncle Val, lets. As soon as I get you back to my computer".

Val turned to Oto "You and I aren't Makkators, but Wiktor said today that Livia would make a good one if she wanted to. She could ask the Pukkta about this stuff without raising suspicion on you, couldn't she?"

Oto looked at Oto with surprised respect, and, for the first time, a little suspicion. "OK, Uncle Val, how did you get so smart?"

Chapter 24

Manhattan

March, 2001CE

"It's the one that's at two o'clock from the Dipper's final star, about a handsbreadth away. That's Saturn.We call it a system because of the rings and the huge number of moons"

"I still don't see it. Can we fool around?"

"Pukkta wants to see you tonight, Uncle Val" Oto said, coming out of his study. Livia and Val looked at each other in disappointment. "You're going to keep your filthy hands off my little sister for another couple of hours, at least"

"What does she want?"

"Ours not to ask, old boy. This afternoon she said I was to bring you around tomorrow morning, but that was her on the v-link, and she wants to see you now. I've called Traktor. He'll be downstairs in about ten minutes"

"Can't we get a cab?" Val was shocked that Val would disturb Traktor at 10 PM for a simple crosstown drive.

"Me maybe. Not you"

"Bring him back soon, Oto. I want to show you the St. Gallen Orgasm Extension Enhancing Position, Val. You have to wear protective gear, or you end up in a coma"

"Impossible" snorted Oto "I've never even heard of it".

"'Cause you didn't go to school in St. Gallen, Fikin. You know the stuff you dirty little boys always say about Swiss finishing schools? It’s all true".

"Oto, come on. If we're gonna go, let's go". Val was was motivated by equal parts acute embarrassment and arousal.

Crosstaown traffic through the park was light. As they slowed to the red light at the old police stables, there was a solid thunk and an impact which threw them forward in their seat. From the back, Val watched Traktor check the rear-view mirror, pull a Heckler & Koch MP70 with an 18 round magazine from under his jacket and press the muzzle against the door panel just below the window ledge with his right hand, buzz down the window 6 inches with his left hand and shift the vehicle into low gear with his knee, all seemingly simultaneously and instantaneously.

There was a moment's silence, then a voice called from behind the car to the left "Hey, you better get out and look at this. I just ran into your car, man"

Traktor reached into his breast pocket and flipped a business card out the window with his left hand "Talk to my lawyer". His right hand shifted the H&K fractionally to keep the carjacker covered.

An unwise young man appeared at Traktor's window and pointed a 9 mm Glock at him "Everybody outa the car"

In a flash of movement so quick Val barely saw it, Traktor reached out, grabbed the man by the wrist and broke his arm. The gun dropped to the ground with a clatter and the perp stared dumbly at his new elbow.

"Get a job" said Traktor as he buzzed the window up. He released the brake and the Cadillac jumped away in low gear, spinning dust at the howling man in the middle of the road.

"Thanks, Traktor, that was really neat. I mean neat, like, all clean and quick, not neat like cool. Thank you for …uh…"

"Go on, saving your life" said Oto, with a smile "You know what this means, don't you?"

"Uh, I'm guessing, but I think I owe Traktor a huge debt now, and until I can pay back that debt, I have to do anything he says, right?"

"More or less" said Oto.

"Oto, don't make it harder on him than it already is" reproved Traktor "Walerius, you don't have to do what I wish. No Beren can make any other Beren do anything, We're stubborn that way. No, all you have to do is take a kill for me"

"What? But, you didn't kill that guy! And he wasn't really going to kill me!"

"We are all given the task of tukkt, of killing, and when it falls to me, I must pass it to someone else. You have earned the right to have it passed to you"

"I didn't earn anything! I just sat there and watched you maim that guy"

"Exactly, Walerius"

"Val, we're getting into some pretty deep territory here, and I thought we could do this later, but, well, events have overtaken that. What Traktor means is that by allowing him to protect you by force, you have issued a challenge, and by issuing the challenge, you have earned the right to take Traktor's next tukkta from him. The challenge you made was essentially saying 'I'm so confident of my own strength and prowess that I don't have to deal with this little threat, Traktor can clean up the mess. When something really threatening happens, then I'll show you what I can do'. I know you didn't say all that, Val, but that's what it meant"

"Why do I have to take Traktor's next kill? And why would Traktor have to kill anybody anyway?"

"Traktor's what we call a Sik, a good man. Only the good men and women are allowed to kill. They're the only ones strong enough. But Traktor's too good, both at Sik, at being good and at Tukkt, or killing. He can't kill anymore, he's done too much of it. It's not good for any Beren to kill beyond thirty or forty times"

"Holy shit, I'm trapped in an SUV with a serial killer! Sorry, Traktor, I didn't mean that"

"It's alright Walerius. My count is still lower than the Butcher of the Ukraine if that makes you feel any better. Your nephew hasn't mentioned his sixteen tukktas"

"Fifteen, Traktor, and I was going to tell him, just not now"

"You killed sixteen people, Oto?"

"It was fifteen, and they weren't people, they were newmen"

"That's a bit tough, isn't it?"

"It's a bit tough being a species on the verge of extinction, too. The newmen didn't treat us like people during the Troubles, either"

"But you're a banker. Why do you have to kill people? Don't you just bankrupt them to death?"

"There's a difference between smart and smartass, Uncle Val. It's what I did for two years between college and coming to New York last year, I was a Tuktor, a killer"

"Is that like a skill, a Te?"

For some people, like Traktor, it approaches an art, but it's something we all do. It just requires training and mental preparation"

"We all do? Like, me too?"

"You especially. It's something all the heirs of the Beren have to do as part of their training. It instills leadership by example, I guess. That's why I was turned into a Tuktor for two years. The old ladies thought I was a little, well, giddy, when I got out of college. They thought I lacked gravity, so they signed me up for full-time training and tukkt. It was interesting, and I got to travel a lot. It's amazing how much damage you can do to a person with a credit card, and I don't mean using it to buy a gun".

"Credit cards are useful, yes, but a quarter inch of fingernail and your teeth are still the best. I've told you before, if you can't take it into a room naked with you, it'll never be there when you need it"

"Thank you Traktor. I haven't forgotten your lessons. Traktor was my instructor"

"Who did you kill? Why?"

"Different people, different reasons. Mostly people who had finished their tasks. People we put in place and trained to make something happen, and who had done what they had been sent to do. People like that tend to be unbalancing when they're past their "best by" date. One or two who really deserved it. Do you remember that Chechen warlord who was tracked down through his cell-phone and bombed? That was me. Wasn't a bomb, just a hand grenade"

"Who else did you kill?"

"You're not supposed to ask, really. It's like asking someone who they're fikking in public. In fact, Fikking and Tukkt are a lot alike, they both feel so gooood at the end"

"Oto, you're being flippant. Don't listen to him when he's like this, Walerius. Fikking and Tukkt are both halves of the same sacred thing. One is a beginning and the other is an ending, and they must both be approached with the same seriousness of purpose. The most important difference is that everyone wants to fik, and no one wants to tuk, unless they are out of balance. This is why we assign tukkt to those who are strongest in heart, so that they can carry the burden for the rest of us. This is also why the sons of the Beren are asked to tuk, because much is asked of them on whom the greatest honour falls. Don't worry, like fikking, no one tuks against their will. And no one will expect you to take a tukkt against someone you know or have had relations with. You can trade the tuk to another for a greater debt. Or you can give it to your child, as a child owes its life to its parent"

"Doesn't that mean some of the tuktors are awfully young?"

"The youngest are some of the best. Less suspicious. Better access"


IF YOU LIKED THIS NOVEL SO FAR, LEAVE A COMMENT. IF ENOUGH PEOPLE LIKE IT, I'LL FINISH IT

ALSO, TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO HAPPEN.

- SHOULD VAL GO TO SPACE?
- SHOULD OTO BE FIK WITH KAYLEY?
- SHOULD TARKIN SUCCEED THE BEREN?
- WHAT HAPPENS AFTER SEPTEMBER 11TH?