Wolf Boy, Chapter 8, Part I

Panfilo responded to Queen Artia’s summons—was there really another word for it?—with an official document of his own. Allec helped him design a digital seal to place on the document. “And something to hint at your uniqueness, Pan.”

Allec saw everyone in terms of singularity. “Each of us is born in our own head and dies in our own head,” he stated emphatically.

But Anthros argued for community before the individual, so Pan’s seal portrayed a reddish horizon filled with figures of standing sentient beings. He used his tail, longer than a spider monkey’s, as the circling frame, like an Ouroboros worm, which Allec also approved.

Panfilo of the Alands and the Tates, within the protection of Raine and Ruella, returns greetings to Queen Artia of the Confederated kin groups in Reforested Greenland. He will present his physical self in her court on the date of…

“Queen Artia will expect you on your schedule,” Sandy said when Pan gave him the letter to review. “Within two lunar years, not on a specific day.”

Anthros Earth time. Not like the station and planet which relied on hours and minutes and--on the station-- manufactured “days” and “nights” in rough correspondence to the planet.

“She won’t meet me at the Earth Space Station, then?” Panfilo said as he amended his reply.

“No. That would benefit neither you nor her.”

True. Quin and Allec, Pan knew, were debating how to smuggle him off the ship when it reached the Earth Space Station. They wanted to avoid what Allec called “hoopla,” not to mention more threatening possibilities. Panfilo’s presence on the ship would be known before the ninth month of the voyage.

Rhys and Lider believed that Junad had acted alone; he wasn’t a member of a nest of assassins. He probably belonged to a group that met and griped over all the loathsome products of the modern world. Maybe that group pushed Junad to act. Or pressured him. Or never saw Junad’s actions coming. Pan could imagine all possibilities.

Marcos Rodriguez Pantoga

Something else troubled Rhys and Lider, something connected to the Moon, to Panfilo being abandoned on Earth when he was four or so. They questioned Pan about his memories. He mostly remembered eating out of restaurant bins. Everything before that was hazy.

“Do they think I was grown on the Moon?” he asked Allec.

Allec, who never hedged, hedged. “Junad talks a lot of shit.”

Was I cloned? From whom?

Pan didn’t ask. He wasn’t particularly religious but Lider had a good line from the Christian text: Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

“Don’t go looking for trouble,” Rhys interpreted.

“Cause it comes and finds you,” Lider muttered.

Pan had nine months on the ship, two years until he went before Queen Artia, to figure out his pedigree.

He got ready to leave. People came and went from Father Malcolm’s quarters on Mars that Pan shared with Sandy. Each visitor had questions, lists of things to pack, final goodbyes.

Pan spent a couple of nights with his father. Gregory Aland had gotten criticized for his part in taking Pan from Earth. He had also, Pan knew, gotten criticized by Mars citizens who thought Gregory hadn’t looked after Panfilo well enough, that he should have moved to the station when Panfilo got ejected from Mars.

Pan didn’t agree. He was on the same wavelength as Gregory Aland, who wanted to live on Mars and experiment with robotics. Pan was somewhere on the list of Gregory’s priorities. Pan didn’t mind.

They ate in Gregory’s suite in a bubble he shared with other single and widowed men. The meal was supplemented by Mars’s staple algae. Pan used his extended claws to pick apart the strands and feed them into his mouth. Some humans winced at the sight. Gregory didn’t notice as he tapped away at a plastic sheet.

He said suddenly, “Your mother believed you were destined for great things.”

“I know. She told me stories of exiled princes regaining their thrones.”

“It wasn’t only fairy tales. She had a picture.”

Pan lowered his claws.

“Not of you. One of those medieval illustrations on the side of a manuscript: a wolf with a long tail and purple eyes. A picture she bought at auction. I think that’s one reason she insisted we take you on. It was the right decision,” Gregory said, as if he was worried Pan would assume that only Samantha had cared what happened to him.

“Do you have it?” Pan said. “The picture?”

“She destroyed it soon after we arrived. She didn’t want anyone to make the connection between you and wild animals, to take you from us.”

“Thank you,” Pan said. No one else might say it, but he should. 

“You stick close to Quin and Allec,” Gregory told him. “And come back,” he added, which was a shout of affection right there, if one knew how to read it.