“This seems all rather elaborate, don't you think?” Beltare can't help but complain, as she removes the wig, which is making her head itch.
Clive shrugs his shoulders. “Maybe, but no thermal oscillators have disintegrated anyone yet.” Beltare stares at the back of his head. He is probably the only human who even knows what that means. She needs to not underestimate this man; his knowledge is impressive, for a human.
“Fair point. What now?”
Clive shakes his head. “I will drive, and we will talk. We're relatively certain you haven't been followed, but I don't know if you're still in contact with the collective. What I have to say is for your ears alone, because the most logical place for a security gap is with the galanen. No offense. You need to turn off your comms, if you haven't already.”
Beltare thinks about what he's saying. They have no way of knowing if she is still using her comms, he's admitted as much. “You keep saying we. Who else will I be talking to?”
“Just me.”
He falls silent. She doesn't know what he is waiting for. He takes several side roads before he continues. “We believe Sklávoi Ashtoreth is being led by one of more aliens, one who has been here for a very long time, probably shaping human evolution. When Zaleria was here, we compared her DNA to human DNA. We are the same species. If we'd evolved in parallel, you would expect divergence. That has not happened. Zaleria confirmed as much when discussing this with Rolle, who passed that knowledge to me. What are the galanen doing about this?”
Beltare sits there dumbfounded. Clive's assessment is entirely too perceptive. How could he possibly know? She looks at the back of his head, wondering. If he were galan, would she be able to tell the difference? She probes with her symbiots, but there is no response. Still, there is something, a faint echo…
“The galanen have been exploring this issue for many years.” she confides. “We agree with your assessment, but we do not know who it is, how they got here, or where they are located.”
Clive sighs. “We have information that will make all of this clear.”
Beltare quiets her breathing. How? How could they know anything? It's inconceivable. “And are you willing to share that information?”
Clive takes in a deep breath and slowly lets it out. “In a manner, yes. I know what I'm about to ask will be awkward, but I have brought you to Earth to ask one favor. I would like for you to arrange a way for me to discuss our results with one specific galan, privately.”
Beltare looks at him, examining him closely. She is convinced he is not whom he seems to be. She summons reinforcements. “Who are you? You know too much about the galanen to be some simple human.”
He pulls the car off the interstate on a side road that heads off into a heavily wooded region. “I played poker all night with Zaleria while she was on Earth. We discussed a lot, including galanen society.”
“Is that who you want to talk with?”
“I would love to meet her again, but she is not the one I need to contact.” He turns down a side road.
“Where are you taking me?” Beltare asks in a demanding tone, somewhat concerned.
“Somewhere private. Are you willing to set up a meeting or private communication link?”
“I don't know. I'll have to think about it, discuss it with my colleagues. What you ask for is well outside anything we’ve done before, and carries significant risk for us.”
“I understand your reticence. You know how to contact me when you decide,” he says, “but I think at some point you will decide you have few alternatives. I do not believe you will be able to uncover the truth, otherwise.” He pulls off a narrow dirt path that ends at a small field, surrounded by trees. “Your friends can land here without drawing too much attention. Shall we get out and wait for your cohort.”
Cohort—he reflexively used the galanen term for their loose organization of peers. He's got to be galan, Beltare thinks to herself. He knows far too much, and acts like he knows she called for the waverider. How? She can't let him go; they need to bring him back to the collective and question him, probe his mind if they must. She starts to slide over to the door behind him, gently pulling out her pistol, mentally setting it on stun. Clive looks at her. “Beltare, please don't do anything rash.”
She raises the pistol and points it at him. “I don't know who you are, but you're not human. You need to come with me, so we can sort this out.”
Clive stares at her, his already dark face growing even darker as it flushes in anger. “I'll not permit it.”
His words echo in her mind as her limbs suddenly go numb, and her world grows dark as she falls over, unconscious.
∞∞∞
Achi, altered in the guise of Clive, looks at Beltare. He sighs. It is unfortunate he had to do that. His symbiots had been monitoring her, listening to her communicating with her symbiots. Feeling her brain patterns, until they were able to mimic it. That's how he knew she'd summoned the waverider and that it holds a team of four galanen, all of whom he knows. Well, more accurately, Zaleria knows. He looks at her again and pricks her neck with a large dose of a powerful opioid. It'd be more than enough to kill a human, but he knows her symbiots will neutralize it, and in a predictable amount of time. More than enough to do what he must.
He really isn't looking forward to the upcoming encounter. He will not allow himself to be removed from Earth, but it is too late to avoid what must come next, they are nearly here. He waits. The waverider should be homing in on her position, trying to raise her, growing concerned. He stands next to the car, which he will use as a shield. He sees a shimmer of movement off to his right and realizes he'd hardly have noticed it if he didn't know what to look for. They are optically refracting light around them, to hide their presence, manipulating the local gravitational field. It is how their propulsion operates. The ship lands, and the four galanen storm out—two males, two females. The largest of them, Zargus, faces him and demands, “Where is Beltare?”
“She is right here.” He moves to open the back door of the car, as if to let her out, but instead snaps up Zaleria’s and Beltare’s pistols, rapidly firing, making sharp but soft schoop, schoop, schoop reports. He hits both female galanen and Zargus before any of them can react, the remaining one, Trègar, manages to get off a shot, schoop, but not understanding Achi's physical capabilities, he misses him by two centimeters as Achi quickly dodges and fires three rapid shots at and to either side of him, schoopity schoop. The galan can't dodge them all and crumples to the ground, stunned. Like the rest. Achi stands there, calculating, conferring with his little friends. He needs a couple hours of alone time with Beltare, without interruption. There is only one way to assure that, and he lacks the time to use finesse. He pulls her out of the car, and drapes her across the hood, face down. He grabs her head firmly with his left hand as he mentally switches the power setting on one of his pistols, takes careful aim, and shoots a coherent beam through the back of her head and through her comms unit, destroying it. She is left with two relatively small holes in the back of her head that begin bleeding profusely. He rips part of her dress off and makes a bandage out of it.
Well, this is really not going well. Terrible in fact. He scoops up Beltare and heads for the waverider, his little friends already fast at work. They use Beltare's symbiots to cancel all tracking protocols, so he can take it anywhere. They'll be able to follow his movements because of its unique
drive signatures, but they'll not be able to geolocate them with any precision. They'll just have a rough idea of where he is going. That's fine. They won't be able to find them.
∞∞∞
Beltare awakens, feeling incredibly fuzzy. She opens her eyes but can't see. Everything is black, but she feels that isn't because of the lighting. She is disoriented and is having difficulty figuring out what happened. Her symbiots tell her she's been injured. She was shot through the back of the head, which destroyed her comms implant and part of her visual cortex. Her abdomen has also been injured, cut open to get at the other tracker. What happened?!! She's been drugged, with a very powerful depressant, an opium derivative, she learns.
“Good evening.” She hears a deep, unemotional voice say. It sounds like Clive. “You'll regain comms in about two days. The beacon in your abdomen was a little harder to extract, but that wound will fully seal in a few more hours. Ironic, and unfortunate. You and I need to come to an understanding, or you will be waiting two years for a new body to grow on Grazelde with no memories about what has happened since you left Atlanta.”
Her home world. He knows where she lives. How? Why is he telling her this information? He's disabled the ability of her people to find her. Why? Her team, what happened to them?
“Don't worry about your colleagues. It was four against one, but I had two pistols and the element of surprise. The shorter of the two males, the one with the dark skin, almost got me. None of them were seriously hurt, but I could have sliced them in half and that wouldn't really leave a scar, now would it? I left them stunned and clueless, then hijacked your waverider to bring you to an 'undisclosed location' so we can have a… Private. Little. Chat,” he says, slowly enunciating the last three words.
“As far as your head, I'm sorry about that, truly. I unfortunately lack the technology to block the signal, so I was left with only a crude option to buy a little time. It will heal, and in a few days, you'll never know what a mess I made of the back of your head—and your beautiful mane.”
Beltare doesn't know what to say; speechless for the first time in eons. How is he able to use their technology? How can he have done all that he did? Why is he revealing it all; it's clear he wants her to know what he can do. Why? “What do you want?” she finally manages to croak out, throat constricted and dry from the recent trauma.
“I told you what I wanted, but you decided you were going to remove me from my home, from my people,” he says, growing angry. “You have no right to do that, and I'll not permit it. The galanen are the invaders here, and I do not recognize your right to treat us however you feel. You are not gods; you are just people with better technology. You think I’m one of those alien beings, don't you? Well, I’m not. You are being rash. Your people need to get their act together, and if they can't do that, you need to get off Earth and stay off.”
Beltare feels her face flush hot, as she reacts to his anger with her own. “Who are you to make such demands?! What do you want?”
“I am a complication, nothing more. I'm just a man, who happens to know a lot of information. What do I want? I want humanity to pass through the singularity—our crisis as the galanen call it—and emerge on the other side as the galanen did. To be reunited with our kin as equals, cousin.” He spits out the last word, frustrated. “But I'm beginning to wonder how evolved you really are.”
Beltare tries to move and feels restraints on her hands and feet; they are bound together behind her back with aluminum manacles. He notices her movements.
“I'm not so stupid as to assume you are not a threat just because you're blind and partially broken. Galan are resilient, and you are already healing. But, it'll take you more than six hours to get out of those handcuffs, and diverting your symbiots to make that happen will slow down the speed with which they can restore your sight and your comms. I defer to you how to best devote their energies, but I have more drugs and more handcuffs. Of course, I can always shoot you in the head again, too.”
She hears him moving around, coming closer to her. She doesn't have any idea where she is, only that she is lying on a hard, very cold surface. Probably a stone or “concrete” floor. Suddenly, she feels extremely vulnerable. He grabs her by the head, firmly, but not roughly, and she struggles. She hates the feel of his hands touching her and her inability to make him stop. It's a visceral reaction that literally makes her skin crawl. She thrashes violently around, trying to get out from under him. He pauses what he is doing.
“Hold still,” he says in a softer voice. “I'm just checking the bandage to see if you've stopped bleeding yet. When you stop leaking, I'll put you on something more comfortable, but I don't want you bleeding all over the leather.” She makes herself hold still while he removes the bandage, then reapplies it. “Not yet,” he says as he lays her head back on the floor, gently. “And don't worry, I'm not interested in slaking my carnal lusts within your flesh. I'm not an animal, but I will fight when provoked. Besides, you're like, ancient. I have my standards.”
“Is that what you did to Zaleria?”
“Wow. You are straying far from the truth. I can see your eye color was chosen well, perhaps meant as a caution from one of your loving parents? Allow me to ask you some questions to see if I can direct your thoughts to a more enlightened path. Why do you think you can do what you want on Earth? By what right do you come here and decide how you will help mankind? If we fail, do you take ownership of that or just walk away and play god somewhere else?”
“And who are you to question me so?!” Beltare snaps in reply, before thinking about potential consequences.
Achi kneels down and grabs her firmly by the hair until his lips are almost touching her right ear. “I'll tell you true,” Achi whispers in an almost inaudible voice, his breath barely brushing her ear. “I am a worm, a nobody, the least of all God's children. And yet here you lie, and four of your comrades elsewhere. What would you do if you actually ran into this alien being you're looking for? Do you think it'd be an easier opponent than me? I'm just a man. Compared to me, you are god-like. Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Poor little fallen angel…and to think I thought the galanen might be able to help humanity.”
He gets up, tiring of his pointless vindictiveness, growing instead very weary. He sighs deeply. “I know exactly who I am, but I respectfully submit you lack the same self-awareness. You should get some. I know something of the one you seek. It is evil incarnate. I've hurt your body; it will heal. That thing could hurt you in ways that would never heal, in ways that I never would.”
She hears him walk off but not far. She tries to move into a more comfortable position. She hits her leg against a low table. Probably a 'coffee' table. He calls out to her from another room. “Hold on a moment. You're just going to bang into stuff and smear blood everywhere. I'm getting you something to drink that will help you heal faster. Then I'll help you get more comfortable, and we can discuss what comes next—if you think you can be civil for a bit.”
“I wasn't the one who shot four galan and kidnapped another.”
“Right, you're the person who pointed her pistol at me and called four people to kidnap me. Not my fault I'm just faster at reacting to a perceived threat than you are. Perhaps the benefit of not receiving a proper, more evolved upbringing,” he says, lacking any real invective. He comes back out with his custom concoction for feeding symbiots. He finds her more or less lying on her back and left side, legs and arms tucked behind her in the handcuffs, bloody head against the couch and side against the coffee table. She is bleeding on the damn leather anyway. A sorrier sight he has not seen in quite a while. He shakes his head, even though she can't see it. She's a mess. He almost feels sorry for her, but she still has that arrogant and aloof look on her face, and he can tell she is beginning to calculate what she wants to try and do next. He sighs. “You know Beltare, some day you really need to get that stick out of your ass.”
She is taken aback by the phrase as she tries to figure out what it means without the ab
ility to connect with the collective. She is both insulted and puzzled.
“What, you didn't load that little phrase into your local storage? It means you tend to be too uptight. You need to learn to go with the flow, be confident enough to act extemporaneously. Rules help maintain order but can be a crutch. You also tend to make too many emotional decisions, which is funny since most people assume you are cold and calculating.”
“You don't know anything about me. How could you? We've never met before!” she snaps.
“Untrue, but I'm sure it didn't leave an impression on you.” He bends over. “Here, let me help you sit up.” He puts his arm under her shoulders and helps her into a sitting position, arms and legs still bound behind her but more comfortably balanced.
“This is very awkward.” She hisses. “Can I convince you to take off the handcuffs, at least the ones binding my legs to my hands?”
“I'm not sure I trust you enough. You had a chance, but that point is gone—at least for now. What oath could you swear to me that you wouldn't feel free to violate?” he asks, testing her.
“Among the galanen, we share what we mean. But if you need more,” she pauses, momentarily lost, “I don't know. What are you looking for?”
“What do galanen hold sacred?”
“Life. The universe,” she pauses, trying to think of something that he might cling to. “We know of a Being of Light, that we believe is the personification of the multiverse. It's consciousness, so to speak. All of Existence is alive.”
“And have you met this Being?”
She wonders at him. How much does he know? It's inconceivable he isn't part of the collective or has had access to it somehow. Maybe through Zaleria? “I haven't, personally.”
“That's what I thought,” Achi says. “It must be nice to live just over 60,000 years and not have suffered corporeal death at least once. It builds character.”
“Oh, and how many times have you 'built your character’? It seems lacking to me.”
Through the Singularity Page 29
