Unreconciled

by W. Michael Gear

  Vartan bellows, “She’s not a Prophet. None of them were. It’s a disease. A protein that eats holes in a person’s brain. Don’t you get it?”

  I thrust my bone scepter at him, declaring, “You are an abomination!”

  “Fuck you! We’re not the Chosen. It’s all a pus-sucking lie!” His face is tortured; tears, not rain streak down his cheeks.

  “The universe does not make mistakes!” I roar back at him, stepping up to face him. To my growing horror, he doesn’t so much as wince.

  “The universe doesn’t give a shit about us. It never did. That bastard Galluzzi trapped us on Deck Three. And we did what we had to in order to survive. It was a shitty deal, filled with shitty choices, and we’re what’s left.”

  “The universe—”

  “Is fucked!” He steps forward, thumping the heavy rifle against my gut. “The Supervisor and the others, they told us the truth: This place is killing us. And if you go down that trail, into that forest, not a one of you will be alive by nightfall.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “I’ve been there! I’ve seen! Petre was the best of us. His team, Tikal’s team, my team, are dead because they went down there. You get it?”

  “Hand me that rifle.” I reach for the weapon.

  “I’ll see you in hell first, Batuhan.” He shoves me backward, retreating a step and bringing the rifle up. To the others, he shouts, “Now, turn around. Get the kids back to safety. Dry off and get warm.”

  “You . . .” I swallow, trying to muster words from a fear-clogged throat. “You . . .”

  Vartan says through an emotion-tight voice, “You’re delusional, don’t you get it? You’ve convinced yourself it’s real? That you’re special? It’s a lie, it’s ugly, and it’s finished.”

  “You defy the universe?” I cry, reeling, seeking the right words. Panic, like a paralytic wave, rolls through me.

  “I’m right here,” Vartan looks up at the storm-brooding sky and lifts a knotted fist. “You want me? I’m right here! Blast me down! I dare you!”

  The women gasp, actually cowering back, fearful eyes going to the heavens.

  I, too, stare up, but only see twisting and torn-looking low clouds scudding off toward the west. I pray, with all my heart, for lightning to strike, to char Vartan down to the blackened bones.

  Instead a soft and misty rain settles on us like dew.

  I gape, suffer a physical pain in my chest. The world seems to have gone oddly gray. A sick feeling, like I am going to throw up, turns my stomach sour.

  Vartan’s display of the rifle is all the authority he needs as he orders, “All of you, get those children back to the barracks. Get them warm. Then make them breakfast. That’s an order.”

  “But I . . .”

  My objection is silenced by a single thunderous shot from the rifle that hisses past my ear. I cannot move. Every muscle locked tight.

  But the others do, all shuffling past me and Vartan. Fear burns bright in their eyes as they glance my way. Vartan’s hot gaze they ignore.

  To my surprise Ctein and Shimal remain, apparently as stunned as I am.

  “When we get back,” I manage to say, “You will pay for this.”

  Vartan shakes his head, lips pursed. “Not you. Or you, either, Ctein. You preach faith?” He gestures with the rifle. “Go on. Take the path. If I see either of you up here again, I’m putting a bullet right through you. And when I do, there’s no immortality. Just rot and Donovan’s invertebrates.”

  He points the muzzle at my chest. I stare into the dark bore, a crawly tingle deep inside where the bullet will strike.

  I turn to go, my feet oddly leaden.

  As Ctein and I step over the edge, Vartan hollers, “Remember? The universe doesn’t make mistakes!”

  80

  Talina slipped out of sight behind the concrete foundation of one of the solar collectors as the Unreconciled hurried past, some on the verge of running. As they slopped their way through the mud, they kept looking fearfully over their shoulders, as if the furies of hell were going to be in hot pursuit.

  Talina leaned her head back, considered.

  Well, well, call it a spur-of-the-moment Reformation.

  As the last of the women, almost stumbling from fatigue, trudged past with two children in slings on her shoulders, Talina stepped out. Walking carefully, she took in the poncho-clad man as he peeled back his hood. Dark hair. Yep, the shooter.

  Before him stood a woman, a frail-looking thing. Hair black with rain, her thin, scarred face, pale. The woman’s hands were twitching; either her jaw was spastic, or she was shivering so hard her teeth where chattering.

  She caught sight of Talina, and terror glittered in her dark eyes. She gave a slight nod to the man; he turned, bringing his weapon up.

  He froze at the sight of Talina’s rifle, fixed as it was on his chest. The man instantly understood. The merest pressure on the trigger would blow him away.

  “Put it down slowly,” she told him. “I’m not in a forgiving mood, so don’t fuck with me.”

  He swallowed hard, eased the rifle down to the damp ground.

  “Now, back away. Both of you.”

  They did, the woman wavering, as if struggling for balance.

  “You’re Talina Perez,” the man said.

  “The same. You?”

  “Vartan Omanian. I was . . . Well, I guess that doesn’t matter anymore.” He smiled wearily. “Go ahead. Shoot. But I’d ask that you take care of Shimal, here. She’s got the prion. Nothing’s her fault. Same with the women and kids.”

  “The prion? So you understand it?”

  “Shyanne told me it was the explanation.” The empty smile was back. “You heard what I told Batuhan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There it is. Sum and total. The universe’s ultimate sick joke at our expense. So pull the trigger. I’m tired of being played for a fucking fool.”

  Talina lowered the rifle to her hip. “So, you’ve exiled Batuhan. Once I shoot you, who’s in charge?”

  Vartan shrugged. Glanced sidelong at Shimal and said to the woman, “Not you. The time for ranting Prophets is over.”

  Turning back to Talina he said, “Doesn’t matter. But don’t take it out on the women and kids. Irdan, he was the first Prophet. The guy was an asshole even before his brain started to go. Formulated the revolt against Galluzzi when we first realized just how fucked we were. Was one of the ringleaders when it came to murdering people he didn’t find worthy back at the beginning of the Cleansing. He laid the groundwork. Batuhan backed him up.”

  “Someone had to object.”

  “Sure. And Irdan and the First Chosen slipped up behind them and cut their throats. Someone had to provide the calories that kept us alive. I think the only skeptic left is Shyanne. Hope she made it.”

  “She did.”

  He raised his arms, let them slap his sides in defeat. “I’m tired. Whatever you’re going to do, do it.”

  She stepped forward, snaked Carson’s rifle back and safely out of Vartan’s reach. Keeping Vartan covered, she picked it up, slung it. “Go on. March. And help this woman. She’s looking like she’s about to fall over.”

  As Vartan took the woman’s arm and started toward the domes, he said, “Listen, I don’t know what you’ve got planned, but I’m not up to anything long and drawn-out. I really want it over. Fast. Quick. Painless.”

  “While I consider that, what do you think we should do with the rest of your people? Shoot them, too?”

  “Pus, no! Especially not the kids. Not their fault who they are. And someone’s got to deal with Batuhan—assuming he doesn’t have the guts to follow his own Prophecy. The guy’s a true believer. That’s his power. He really thinks the universe chose him. Chose us. So if he comes back, shoot him, and be done with it.”

 
“Anything else you want to tell me?”

  “Yeah. There’s a couple of booby traps in the admin dome. One in the kitchen in the freezer, another in the radio room.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “How?”

  “Com.” She tapped an ear. “Muldare tells me the bomb in the radio room didn’t go off when she pulled out the chair. Said it was a clever device, but the battery was dead. Didn’t have enough of a charge to set off the magtex.”

  “Huh! Should have thought of that. Too fucking tired to think straight.”

  “Wasn’t a complete failure on your part,” Talina told him. “Muldare says she’s in need of a change of underwear.”

  81

  Galluzzi watched through the port-side window as the A-7 shuttle dropped through Donovan’s stratosphere. The first red glow was forming on the shuttle’s nose and wings.

  Beside him, in the middle seat, Shig was staring out like a boy on his first spacing. A look of absolute rapture filled the man’s round face; his grin, under other circumstances, would have been infectious.

  Two days? It only seemed like a couple of hours.

  Galluzzi had been shocked when he and Shig had finally stepped through the lock and into the PA shuttle. But then, that was Freelander for you. It screwed with time. Bent it, warped it, and stretched it out of shape.

  What the hell had happened to him in there?

  “She came to me,” he told Shig, finally having come to grips with the revelations in the script-filled corridor.

  He hadn’t said a word after Shig found him weeping softly on the corridor floor. In an almost dissociative state, he’d allowed Shig to help him to his feet. Leaning on the short Indian, he’d let Shig lead him through the dark corridors of the Transportees’ Deck. The phantasms no longer frightened him. Freelander had its own physics, its own continuum. Call it proof that the theoretical physicists were right when they said that time was a human creation used to explain the changing relationship between subatomic particles.

  “By she I assume you mean Tyne Sakihara?” Shig gave him a mild look.

  Galluzzi stared absently at the clouds flashing by the window. “I watched them build the dome of bones. I was there, Shig. It was that clear. I mean it was a real out-of-body experience. And Tyne was talking to me the entire time. Am I crazy?”

  “No more so than any of the rest of us.” Shig had a benign smile on his lips. “Freelander remains a mystery, and I suspect it always will. It exists as an enigma in our universe, part us, part other, and tainted by a physics we can’t comprehend.”

  “So, is Tyne dead? She told me that life is only carbon-based molecules interacting with other molecules. That what we call thought is chemical and electrical impulses. So, if that was just me, imagining her . . .” He frowned, struggling for the words.

  “Maybe she’s alive and dead at the same time?” Shig arched a bushy eyebrow. “She is right, you know. The science is clear: We’re biochemistry. The existence of the soul can neither be proved nor disproved through the scientific method.”

  “And ethics? Morality?”

  “Anthropologists will tell you they are constructs that serve an adaptive purpose when it comes to social relations with one’s fellows. That individual and group survival increases when there are rules and expected norms of behavior.”

  Galluzzi fingered his chin as they dropped down over the ocean. “When it came to ethics, her exact words were: ‘Cling to whatever you have, Miguel. In the end, it’s the only thing that makes existence worth enduring.’”

  “Was she a student of epiphenomenolgy to begin with?”

  “No. But who knows what all those years in Freelander might have done to her before Jem put that bullet . . . Well, never mind.”

  Shig’s smile was reflective of a deeper amusement. “Then it appears that First Officer Sakihara’s very appearance belies her epiphenomenal argument. But that said, I agree with her advice. No matter what one’s philosophical or religious compass would indicate, believing makes existence worth enduring.”

  “She said that euthanizing the transportees was an act of kindness.”

  “Given the fate of Freelander, what do you think? You have a most unique insight, having been in Jem Orten’s shoes.”

  “He turned his transportees into corpses, I turned mine into monsters.”

  “That assertion denies the Unreconciled any claim to free will. A power that, not being an omnipotent god, you do not have.”

  “No, I suppose I don’t,” Galluzzi admitted as the shuttle braked, slowed, and settled on the PA landing pad.

  82

  Dek hurt. The throbbing pain lay deep within—a sort of background to his jumbled thoughts.

  What the hell?

  Where was he?

  He tried to shift. Hurt more.

  “Hold still,” a soothing voice ordered.

  It took effort to pry his eyelids open. Seemed like they’d been glued. The pain localized—a burning sting just under his left eye. After a couple of blinks, the white haze solidified into a duraplast ceiling with a light panel overhead. The dark figure resolved into Kalico Aguila. She sat in a chair to one side, her clothing mud-splotched and filthy, hair a tangled and matted mess confined by a filthy string tied at the nape of her neck.

  “What happened?”

  “Seems you saved my life again. You don’t remember?”

  He blinked, started to reach up for the irritating pain under his eye, only to have Aguila grab his wrist. “You really don’t want to touch that. You’ve got a shard of sialon stuck into your cheekbone. Another inch higher and it would have gone through your eye and into your brain.”

  “A piece of what?”

  “You don’t remember the drone? Shouting for me to drop flat? Standing there, sighting on the drone as it dropped down to kill me?”

  Dek nodded, worked his dry lips. Oh, yeah. He’d heard the thing, how it made a fluttering sound with the rain in the fan blades. The way it had fallen, headed straight for Aguila, it sure wasn’t after reconnaissance.

  “Kalico! Down! Now! Drop flat!” His words echoed in his memory. He’d shouldered the Holland & Holland, the rifle having the same pull and drop as the shotgun he’d used for clays and birds back home. The shot had been instinctive.

  The thing exploded as the bullet tore through it.

  And what felt like the fist of God had knocked him flat.

  After that? Nothing.

  “So, where am I?”

  “Admin dome.” Kalico stood. “Muldare called. The PA shuttle’s on the way. They’ve been locked down over a quetzal scare, but Whitey’s raid failed. They’ll be here within the hour. We’ll get you back to Raya’s. Let her pry the sialon out of your cheekbone. Don’t worry about the blood caked in your nostril. Seems there’s some sort of sinus behind the bone and above the teeth that bled into your nose.”

  “Why does the rest of me hurt?”

  “Muldare says the blast knocked you back a couple of meters. And you’ve got bits of shrapnel here and there that will need to be dug out. Beyond that, you’re just bruised. Lucky it didn’t burst your eardrums.”

  All right. Enough of this. He took a deep breath, swung his legs out, and sat up. Damn. The headache was as bad as that toilet-sucking hangover back in PA or maybe the one he’d barely gotten over from heat stroke. He figured, at this rate, he could make his fortune importing aspirin to Donovan.

  Kalico offered him a hand. Pulled him to his feet.

  Sure enough, Dek discovered a whole lot of hurt. His joints, arms, shoulders, but nothing like the searing in his cheek. He carefully prodded at the angular chunk of sialon. Could just see it at the edge of his vision when he lowered his eyes.

  Weird.

  “So, what’s with the Unreconciled?”

  “Don’t know. Let’s go find out.” Kalico gav
e him a sober inspection. “You okay to walk? Not feeling dizzy or sick?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  She took his arm, just to be sure, and led the way out into the hallway, down to the cafeteria. To one side, Batuhan’s throne sat, empty, like a monstrous reminder.

  Dek turned loose of Aguila, stepped over, this being the first time he’d seen the thing. At first it repulsed him. But as he looked closer, it was to realize the mind-boggling talent and artistry that had gone into the carving of it. It begged a magnifying glass to see the intricate detail.

  “Tal?” Kalico asked her com. “Status?”

  She listened to the reply, shot Dek a look. “Talina’s in the barracks. She’s got the women and children there. Only three men left. Batuhan and one other were last seen taking the trail down into the forest.”

  “Kylee and Flute?”

  “Now there’s a question. Talina just asked me the same.”

  “They’ll show up.” Dek finished his inspection of the throne. Realized he was more wobbly than he’d wanted to admit. He walked over and settled himself into a chair at one of the cafeteria tables.

  Kalico was watching him, something unsettled in her laser-blue gaze. He asked, “What?”

  “I think until you get back to Solar System, you’re going to have a really nasty scar. Those perfect Taglioni features of yours are never going to be the same.”

  “Maybe it makes me look dashing. Like a knuckle-and-skull adventurer. The kind of tough man who takes life by the horns and—”

  “Don’t push your luck. The way you are right now I could knock you over with my little finger.”

  He liked the fact that she was grinning as she said it.

  “Yeah, I suppose. Still, it makes a good story. But what about the Unreconciled? Think Talina’s all right alone over there? I lived with these people just one deck down. They’re not kind and loving at heart.”

  Kalico took a breath, picked at the mud flaking off of her clothing. “I’m not feeling particularly forgiving at the moment either. They’ve relentlessly tried to kill us. The loss of Talbot and Dya hasn’t hit home yet. But it will. I’m angry, Dek. My inclination is to burn Tyson Station and everyone in it to ashes.”