Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY)

by Jean Johnson

  “Right…right. Alright. Safeties off,” he ordered, firming his tone into an order. “Take aim at Captain Ia…and at my command, pull and hold the triggers. In three, two, one…fire.”

  Helstead pulled her trigger right away. MacInnes was next. Nothing seemed to emerge from the guns, nothing in the visible-light spectrum, but Ia felt each impact. Each unseen beam felt like a jolt of electricity, like a bath of warm sunlight, the pull of a magnet…or rather, like the touch of a mind. The touch of life-energy.

  The first one tingled. The second itched. Crow and Teevie shook their heads and fired. The third and fourth unseen beams altered everything. The bodies of her crew members started glowing, the power cables gleamed…and the floor and the walls and the boxes and crates shimmered, turning into tissue paper.

  With the alteration in her perception, she could see the guns firing in bright, golden white lances that swirled at their edges with flickering hints of rainbow colors. Time seemed to slow down, and the white, Sol-spectral glow of the overhead lights stretched out, taking on elongated, prismatic hues. She watched, wide-eyed and fascinated, as O’Taicher exhaled in a swirling smoke cloud of heated gas, and remembered where she had seen this before.

  When I was enraged by Sung’s disobedience in battle…and then later…later, when I learned to let go of the pain from the…

  Sighing, O’Taicher tightened his finger on the trigger, firing the odd weapon at her. The fifth beam struck with blinding intensity, inadvertently aimed right at her eyes. On instinct, Ia inhaled, focusing on the feelings and letting go of her mind. She embraced the energies, embraced, absorbed…and slipped. Slipped, disintegrated, free-fell, and coalesced.

  Not too unlike the downward-around-and-out flip she normally made with her gifts and her mind, save that this was a three-dimensional aerobatic twist made with her body as well as the rest. Her body, which no longer had substance, but which now felt whole in a way she couldn’t confine into words.

  “Holy shakk!” O’Taicher dropped his gun, releasing the trigger as it fell. The metal clattered and the crystal chimed against the deckplates, but the gun wasn’t damaged.

  Ia could see the whole cargo bay, up, down, and all around, though most of her attention, her viewpoint, was still focused on the quintet. That quintet, and the six bodies beyond and the seventh to one side, still continued to glow. Mostly with thermal energy, in a warmth that…that reminded her of a muffin, of all things, soft and bready and sweet. The overhead lights were a glass of cool water. And the beams of the weapons, those were a meal injected directly into her bloodstream.

  “Yess! Cease fire!” Harper ordered. He grinned—glowed—and raised his fists in the air. “Success!”

  Ia opened her mouth to say something, to respond, but nothing happened. Her sense of self moved, but only in the way that a ball filled with liquid, or maybe of plasma, might swirl and shift. She focused again on the dozen Humans standing in front of her. Something was missing. Something…Ia realized with a swirling start that she couldn’t smell anything anymore.

  Accustomed as she had grown to the scents of ship metal, cleaner, lubricants, recycled air, plant life, washed and unwashed bodies, as much as her active awareness of all of that had faded over time…she couldn’t sense that anymore. She could see the motes of molecules wafting off their bodies, but it wasn’t a sense of smell as her now-missing nose once knew.

  It was a strange side effect.

  Harper clapped his hands, and she watched, fascinated, as the sound waves rippled out from his cupped palms in little pale violet shimmers. “Right! Captain,” he stated, facing her sphere and bowing slightly, “can you hear me?”

  She tried again to speak, then gave up. Reaching out with her mind, she broadcasted to him. (Yes, I ca…)

  All of them doubled over, grabbing at their heads. Even Harper, who was the most mind-blind of the group.

  Oh. Reining back on the effort she thought she had needed in order to project, Ia opened up a gentler, whispered level of projection. (Yes, I can. How’s that? Too loud?) she asked, focusing on each of the others. Helstead, still wincing, gave her a thumbs-up as she straightened. (Sorry, this is…new. I…see things…It’s all very…)

  She started to turn around, still staring at the waiting lamps and cables and the pulsing green-brown coils of the rare-earth magnets. Their auras looked tasty. She didn’t have a sense of smell, but she did have a sense of taste. She was also hungry. Very hungry.

  “…Captain? Captain Ia, if we could kindly have your attention?” Harper asked dryly as she drifted toward the magnets. She heard/saw him sigh, another swirl of exhaled breath. “Great. I’ve reinvented the old attention-deficit disorder, only I’ve given it to a half-blooded Feyori.”

  (Shh. I’m hungry.) Since she didn’t have a mouth, just an all-over sense of self, she intersected that sense of self, that sphere, with the green-brown energies. Sure enough, it tasted green-brown. Heh…like the way a Gatsugi would describe a dish of broccoli beef. Inhaling the flavors, she supped from the magnets and drank from the overhead lights.

  “Helstead, would you kindly shoot her?—No, not the psi-gun,” Harper corrected. “Use the stunner I issued you.”

  At the backside of Ia’s field of view, she watched the others hastily move out of the way, and the petite redhead pull out a handheld stunner. Its field was a single, invariable width, though it could be programmed for up to five different strengths. Raising it, Helstead aimed it at Ia, thumbed the controls to maximum, and fired.

  It felt…It felt like getting hit in the back with a giant shepherd’s pie. Or maybe a pot pie. Some kind of pie, meaty and filling. (Again!) Ia ordered, turning to face her, still soaking in the magnetic auras. She gentled her tone as the others winced. (Sorry…again, please. That felt good.)

  Helstead obligingly fired. Harper, on the other hand, snapped his fingers and pointed one at her spherical sense of self. “Focus, Captain. No drifting off into an energy-based food coma. Focus!”

  The third pulse of the stunner made her feel full. Instinctively, Ia shielded herself against the influx of energies, moving out of the immediate environs of the magnet. (…Enough. I’m good.)

  “Good,” Harper praised her, and gestured to a spot next to himself, with a half-bowed sweep of his arms. “Now, get your floaty, silvery self over here so I can explain to you how to get back into your normal, Human, matter-based self.”

  Swirling in a sigh, Ia refocused on him and drifted over to the indicated spot. (And how do I do that? And why should I try?) she asked, mildly curious. (This is all rather fascinating. I’m in no hurry to go back.)

  Sighing, he boldly stuck his hand into her side, invading her sense of self. Shock rippled through her, not only from the touch, but from the energies and sensations that touch brought. Not only could she feel his chemical heat, and the faint hints of magnetism inherent in his cells, but she could taste the electrical impulses of nerves chattering back and forth with his muscles. The kinetic energy of his blood as it raced through his veins. The thoughts in his head.

  The thoughts…His thoughts, of just three nights before, when she had managed to scrape free one precious hour of time with him. Memories of their activities. Sights, tastes, sounds, touches…and smells, all evoked with a vividness and an intimacy that sprang from his emotions. Strong ones, and a source of energy all of their own. It was so much easier to read his mind like this…

  “Shoot her now!” Come back to me, Ia, he ordered in her mind, even as he slashed his free hand. Focus on what you want!

  Everything vibrated. Everything focused as their energy, mental/emotional/psychic/crystalline energy, flooded into her. For a moment, Ia’s whole being quivered, struck like a bell…and then she fell, snapping back into her body. Snapping back into the memories of bliss his memories invoked.

  She hit the deck with a head-cracking thud. Uncomfortably aware of just how solid and separate each part of her bones and muscles, organs and blood felt, she grunted, shifted her l
imbs, and pushed herself up on one elbow. “Slag…shakking v’slag,” Ia muttered, head aching from its blow. “Slag, but that hurts.”

  Harper crouched and offered her both his hand and a wry smile. “Next time, try to land on your feet?”

  “I did land on my feet,” she growled, blushing. Accepting his hand, Ia let him help haul her upright. “I just…slag…I forgot how to stand. Just for a moment. Oh, laugh it up,” she retorted, as Helstead shook with barely suppressed snickers. “You try losing two of your five senses and your awareness of how things like muscles and joints work.”

  Letting go once she had her balance, Harper grinned unrepentantly at her. “Collapse or not, it worked! Welcome back to the land of the matter-based, my love.”

  She gave him a dirty look. “Why did you have to use that set of images?”

  He sobered, giving her a mildly chiding look. “My research notes stated quite clearly that the subject has to remember what it’s like to have a body and want to return to it. Our primary source for information did a number of experiments on willing half-breeds, and that was one of the best focal points for wanting to return. Now, gather your wits, rest for a few minutes, then we’ll try it again.”

  “Ugh. Again?” Ia half muttered, half groaned. She knew he was right, but that didn’t mean she was ready to go for it just yet.

  “The more times you make the crossover and manifest with our help, the closer you’ll get to figuring out how to do it on your own. And how to come back on your own.” The look he gave her was both a warning and a tease. “Because until you do, I will continue to think those thoughts at you.”

  “I’m getting the feeling I’d like to know what kind of thoughts he’s thinking at her,” Helstead quipped, eyeing her two superiors with an amused gleam in her hazel eyes. “Though I’m sure I could guess.”

  MacInnes, crystal-gun pointed at the floor, shook her head. “I’m not that suicidal, sir. We just created a Meddler out of our own captain, and I am not that suicidal.”

  Her vehemence made Ia smile.

  MARCH 19, 2497 T.S.

  SIC TRANSIT FROM OBERON’S ROCK

  GS 138 SYSTEM

  …AND JULY 8, 2498 T.S.

  The reading lamp behind her living-room easy chair tasted like brie. The milder inner bits of the cheese, not the outer ones. Even though Ia was firmly back in her matter-based body, she still had an awareness of the flavors of various energies around her. The smell of her own soap-scrubbed body, the slightly dusty fabric of the chair, and the faint hints of greenery in the air flowing through the vents from the amidships-sector lifesupport bay all grounded her firmly in her body, but the reading lamp still tasted like brie.

  The datapad, on the other hand, was a spicy snippet of sausage. She kept having to stop herself from trying whenever the urge came back to nibble on it. Her matter-based body did not process electricity the same way her Meddler-based one did.

  Yesterday, she had tried to eat energy from the electrodes at the command console while guiding the ship in a protracted starfight over Oberon’s Rock, but all that had done was fill her with excess static energy and make her view of the bridge start to glow. It hadn’t done anything for her physical hunger. In a way, “tasting” the energies in this solid body was very much like smelling the culinary efforts of a restaurant while stuck out on the sidewalk with no credits in her pockets.

  Right, she thought, saving her latest prophecy. That’s that, and it goes into the Afaso delivery file. Now for the preshipment of needed supplies to Dabin…though I’d better double-check that they’re still going to be needed. I’m still searching for more of those little frayed tendrils from when Sung snapped the threads of fate.

  Closing her eyes and focusing her mind away from the cheese-and-meat glows, she flipped down and in, landing next to her own life-stream. Accessing the timestreams was also easier, brighter, and clearer now that she had manifested. The grass was a lush blue-green, the waters clear and mirror-like even where they rushed and flowed fastest, and the sky was a beautiful shade of blue.

  Skipping down the bank, Ia stopped at a point a week or so past a heavy knot of mist. That was one of the nexus points, where her choices would be so vast and her energies would be so low, the Ia of that era wouldn’t be able to foresee what to do. Her future self would have to rely upon her training as an officer, her instincts as a warrior, and her grasp of overall strategy to guide the tactics of that moment.

  The moment she did want, which involved herself working in the local capital, was downstream from that point. Her elder self worked diligently in the version she selected, filling out orders for the struggling, battle-wearied soldiers under her command. Stepping down into the water, Ia readied herself to read those orders since she wouldn’t be able to read her own thoughts. So let’s just see exactly what the Afaso need to send and hide on Harper’s homeworld…

  (About time you showed up.)

  Ia jerked up out of the water and back into herself, fumbling to keep the workpad on her lap before her jolt could dump it to the floor. She looked around, wide-eyed, for signs of Belini, though that voice hadn’t belonged to her. Alone in her quarters, Ia slowly relaxed, puzzled by what she had heard. That…wasn’t the voice of any of my crew members. In fact, it sounded like me, but…not my own thoughts. There’s a distinct difference between my own thoughts and a telepathic sending.

  Confused, she waited for another sending, but nothing happened. Mindful of the ticking of the minutes she had left in her day, she sank back into the timeplains and moved back to the designated insertion spot. Once more, she stepped into the waters of her future self…and once more jumped in startlement.

  (Don’t freak again,) she heard herself state, her tone dry. (You really are hearing me—your future me—talking to you.)

  Blinking, Ia pressed closer to herself. Her future self pressed back, pushing her up out of the stream. Startled, Ia stumbled onto the bank, dropping to elbows and rump in the grass. Her older self stepped…stepped…up out of her own life-stream and crouched by her feet. And then grinned in amusement.

  (Don’t you look shocked…Wait until you can see your expression from this side of things,) the future version of Ia stated. She held out her hand. (Come on. Sit up. I’m going to share with you the list of things you’ll need them to buy and stash, and a couple extra places to stash them.)

  Hesitantly, she extended her own hand, clasping the other version’s palm. (How…what the…huh?)

  (About as coherent as I remembered it, afterward.) Tightening her grip, Future-Ia looked into her eyes, her amber ones showing hints of silver flecks. (Manifesting as a Feyori has put a fine polish on our powers. More to the point, it has finished their blossoming. All you need to do now is learn how to use the extra bits. But be careful.)

  Those fingers squeezed Ia’s with a distinct pressure, reminding her that even in the timeplains, she was accessing them from a physical body, not a Feyori one.

  (Yes, you can now not only contact yourself, but read your own thoughts,) her future self warned her. (But doing it casually will lead to doing it carelessly, and that will lead to paradoxically induced confusion. You will be able to see this in the side-timelines, if you look. Resist temptation, don’t try to contact yourself any earlier than this, and you’ll be fine.)

  (Ah…right. Right,) Ia agreed. This was herself, without a doubt. (Ah…best piece of advice for right now?)

  Her future self smiled slightly. (Three things. Make doubly sure your agents among the Afaso get that portable hyperrelay purchased and hidden away. Avoid stepping into the life-waters of other Feyori—they will sense your presence and be able to speak with you from now on if you tried it. And don’t let Belini touch you. Resist her urgings to manifest for now. It may seem to cause problems in the Meddler scenarios, but you’ll lose a powerful edge when Miklinn’s little pawn-army comes for you if they know you can transform at any point before then.)

  (…Right.) Even without touching the timestreams for that
moment, not all that far upstream from this one, Ia could see the difference that sort of advantage would make. (Right, I know that particular possibility-scenario. I didn’t think it was a strong enough probability, but if you say…er, if we say so, then I’ll go for it,) she agreed, gathering her wits. Hands still clasped, she let her older self help her to stand up on the bank. (So, what’s on that list aside from the hyperrelay?)

  It came across as a pulse of thought. Ia embraced it, as familiar in flavor as her own, and carefully secured it in a corner of her upper thoughts. Older-Ia nodded encouragingly. (…Got it?)

  (Yes. And we’ll both resist the urge to linger in your…our…presence. This is going to take a lot of thought to come to grips with,) she added, letting go of her other self’s hand.

  (Get some more crysium and make some special wreaths out of it,) Elder-Ia told her. (You’ll see the exact life-paths the new Rings of Truth should influence. You’ll need to lose about a week’s worth of sleep within a year, but the price isn’t bad.)

  (No, it wouldn’t be,) she agreed. Eyeing herself, a deep part of her mind wondered how this could happen. Another part prodded her into an impulsive move. Wrapping her arms around her older self, she hugged. (Thank you,) Ia sent. (Thank you for all that you’ve done, and all that you’re going to do.)

  (Thank you yourself,) she got in return, along with a squeeze, and a push back. (Now get back to work. And don’t forget to sleep, and all that other self-care shakk.)

  Ia peered at her future face, noting the shadows under her older self’s eyes, the worry-frown beginning to crease her otherwise young brow. (Don’t forget that for yourself.)

  Amused, the older version stepped back into the waters and vanished. Bemused, the younger one stared at the rippling stream, then shook her head and started trudging back up the gentle slope.

  That has got to be the weirdest …! She stopped after a moment, taking the extralong span of seconds within the timestreams to just contemplate the awe of what had happened. I just…I just talked with myself. I’ve broken the Time-barrier of…of vidshow versus reality…! I never once checked the timeplains for temporal anomalies. Just the streams themselves.