Chapter 9

Kittamm sat alone in the conference room with the transparent wall.  Teric had told him that her brother was visiting the complex and wished to speak with him.  Then, she asked if he would do so.  He graciously accepted.

While he waited for Jehrac to arrive, he was alone with his thoughts.

His assistant Feyhoth had done a wonderful job with their staged crisis scene.  And Teric had done exactly what he thought she would in such an event:  call him to help calm Feyhoth and divert a potential disaster.  It was done merely to try to gain some of the administor’s confidence.  Now she wanted him to talk with her own young brother.  He had hoped for something to come of his efforts but this was beyond all his expectations.  He wondered if and how he would be able to use the boy.  Once he talked to him he would have a clearer idea.

So far he had been successful in concealing his motives from the Outsiders.  At least none of them seemed outwardly suspicious.  In retrospect, it had been surprisingly easy thus far to deceive a great many Outsiders.  They trusted easily and assumed benevolence almost unconditionally.  Obviously, their decadent beliefs and lifestyles formed the primary cause of their weaknesses.

Since he had very little experience with any technology, much less the highly advanced equipment and devices in the complex, he had no idea how much longer his most precious secret would be kept.  It was a secret that he alone possessed; not even his closet aides and assistants had been aware of it.  He didn’t completely understand it himself.

Years ago, on Natura, before he had risen to power, people started becoming ill and showing the first symptoms of what would come to be known as the Sickness.  He thought it odd that no one noticed that the only people ill at first were those that had direct contact with him:  his family, friends, teachers.  But the older people had forgotten and the younger people were never taught much about diseases, like viruses, that it required advanced technology to deal with.  And because they had a primitive existence people were frequently sick with something.  It wasn’t until a year later that it was proposed that some serious epidemic might be taking place when more and more people got violently, horribly ill and never recovered.

At first a younger Nehra conducted some private experiments.  He would go out of his way to visit villages that hadn’t yet been infected.  Then he would wait and watch as the Sickness soon spread everywhere he went.  His people had a limited knowledge of medical science but he read and learned everything he could.  Finally, he began to understand what was happening: he was, somehow, a carrier of the Sickness, perhaps the only one.  Regardless of its origin, he could spread it but was probably immune to it.  He didn’t know the specific medical details of the disease but he did know that he was at least partly responsible for his people’s epidemic.

He told no one but considered going off alone into the wilderness.  He considered killing himself as he constantly felt an enormous, thick hot ocean of guilt drowning him.

One day he approached a public meeting the Leader and Elders were holding.  He started by telling them that he had learned what he could about the Sickness.  Then, he told them that he had eventually lost his entire family, most of his friends and teachers to the Sickness.  Before he could tell them that he was a carrier, and therefore highly responsible, they stopped him in mid-speech and talked privately amongst themselves.  When they were done conferring they told him they were sorry for his loses.  They appreciated his efforts in learning about the Sickness and they wanted him to head a new committee for the purpose of looking into what could be done about the epidemic.

Nehra Kittamm stood at the crossroads of his life.

The first path led to finishing his speech, getting out the complete truth about his condition and possibly being thrown out of society or even killed as punishment.

The second path led to concealing forever his condition, social acceptance and pity along with an important and powerful position in his people’s government.

He chose the second path.

He became a public symbol of his people’s suffering, loss and misery.  In the years that followed he rose steadily to power.  Eventually, he had a few of his people secretly build the distress call beacons and encouraged them to escape.  Sitting in the Med Complex on an Outsiders world was to him a monument to his endless planning and efforts over many years.

The door on the other side of the wall opened and brought him back to the present.

Jehrac Jonsen walked in.  Nehra Kittamm rose, smiled and said, “How do you do, son.  I am very pleased to meet you.”