But other scenes played out, too—intimate and private—carrying his thoughts to a time when Qural alone walked at his side. He said nothing, but Norris was quietly grateful she had spoken with Rantara, relieving him of the awkward task of explaining to the one he loved a time with another long before. As he stood, quietly surveying Qural’s estate and remembering, a sudden, random intrusion he couldn’t foresee shocked him back to another purpose.
“They were going to hand me over.”
Qural moved close.
“What do you see, Darrien?”
“That Searcher big-shot who used to argue with the Professor and Haleth—Toa, he was called.”
Qural nodded quickly. “Yes. Do you remember what happened? That was just before we sent you back.”
“I remember,” Norris replied with a quiet sadness in his voice. Rantara looked quizzically at Qural.
“What is he talking about, Ambassador?”
Qural knew the moment would arrive at some point, yet she had hoped the memories would ease back into Norris’ mind in a slower, more digestible fashion.
“The one Darrien speaks of was Kol and Haleth’s superior. He was a Pod Elder among the Searchers and overseer to their scientific pursuits, but he was not as he seemed and no honorable scientist dedicated to learning. Instead, Eru Toa was an opportunist in league with a splinter group that wanted access to Darrien. We could not allow that, of course.”
Rantara knew what it meant.
“That’s why you sent him home—why he went back to human space before you were ready.”
“Yes,” Qural replied. “We had no other acceptable option.”
“Why did you act to keep him from these people?” Rantara asked.
“As it was with your researchers on Voralem, their intentions toward Darrien were not with his safety in mind, Sergeant.”
Norris looked at Qural for a moment before the inevitable thought pried its way in.
“I remember now. You and Kol wanted nothing to do with Toa and his group, but he was powerful and had a lot of juice inside the Searcher hierarchy. He couldn’t have been very happy about it when he found out you sent me back before they could get their hands on me.”
“No, he was not; there were…consequences.”
“What does that mean, Qural; what did they do?”
Qural keyed a command into a small communicator on her wrist.
“I’ve called for Rentha; she will come out in a few moments to meet us. I want you to see something.”
Rantara looked at Qural warily. “Where are you taking him?”
“It would be best if you joined us, Sergeant,” Qural answered. “Darrien, it is time for me to show you what you could not have known before. We intended to wait until a few days had passed so you could adjust to the returned memories, but we no longer have the luxury of time. This may be an unpleasant experience, but you must see and understand. It is not directly a part of the larger question Professor Tindas mentioned earlier, but it is just as important to me.”
Norris turned toward the house, watching an air car lift from the front pad, circling smoothly before speeding toward them at treetop level. It spun neatly above and eased itself onto the grass. Rentha opened the access hatch, leaving the machine’s lift engines idling softly. In seconds, they were aboard and climbing above the sloping compound toward the north, cruising over the orchard at a hundred meters. At once, Norris thought of Rantara’s air car and their desperate, midnight dash from the beach at the foot of a cliff on Kalarive, watching Bera Nima disappear at last into the darkness behind them. He wondered if she thought of it, too.
A short ride over the slope of a gentle, forested incline brought them to a clearing at the border between a small house and a tangle of trees that looked to Norris like old oaks. He looked at them and saw twisted sentinels, each a witness to the relentless passage of time. When they stepped from the car, a lone Anashi female approached them across a narrow strip of grass and Qural turned to Norris.
“Darrien, this is Karezza; our domestic assistant here.”
Tall and slender, even by Anashi standards, she went to Norris and took his hands.
“I am pleased to meet you, Lieutenant.”
“It’s a pleasure,” he replied.
With a glance toward Qural, Rez was moving.
“She is waiting, Ambassador.”
They followed her to where a footpath of flat, polished stone led a meandering course and beyond it, a sand-shaded, two-story house with exaggerated, oval windows in the distinctive style of Anashi architecture. Qural stopped and turned to Norris.
“Darrien, say nothing at first; it may seem strange to ask, but please be patient and you will understand.”
Norris nodded, but a worried look from Rantara said in gesture what she hesitated to voice in words.
The place seemed a cheerful, modest home with nothing out of the ordinary to distract their attention. They walked through a kitchen to an open room cluttered with the trappings of a painter in what Norris imagined was an artist’s haven. Qural nodded toward a hallway where Rez stopped.
“Our visitors are here,” she called out and seconds later, Marelle moved from the hallway into the light. Cautiously at first, eyeing Norris and Rantara, she walked to Rentha and embraced her. Norris looked at once toward Qural, but she was already motioning for him to join her.
“Marelle, this is Darrien Norris and Onallin Rantara. He is a traveler from a faraway planet who has come back to visit us again.”
“Hello,” she said, sheepishly offering her open palm. The towering Khorran female in her living room, it would seem, was not as noteworthy as the strange visitor Rez spoke of earlier in the day.
Norris stared with dumbfounded confusion and he placed his hand on hers, but after a moment, she backed away slowly. Qural turned to Norris and said, “Do you remember my sister, Darrien?”
“Yes, of course I remember her.”
Marelle looked, but said nothing and Rentha moved to join her. “Darrien was with us long ago, Mother, before the bad time.”
At last, she stepped forward, regarding him carefully.
“You knew me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied cautiously. “I was…when I was here before, we were friends, don’t you remember?”
“No,” Marelle answered, now looking only at Qural. “They came and took away my memories from when I was younger.”
Qural moved toward Marelle.
“After you went home, some bad people came for Marelle, Darrien. They were angry and stole her memories as a way of punishing us.”
Nothing made sense and Qural’s deliberate, odd tone, as if speaking to a child did little to explain. When he last saw Marelle, she was consumed with taking care of a small and boisterous Rentha, dividing her time between her daughter and work as an assistant to Qural and Tindas. But she had changed.
He watched the cautious fidgeting of another; a different person he’d never known and it unnerved him to see her hesitate. He looked at once to Rentha, understanding at last how it must’ve been for her only days before when he first arrived from Sannaris. Did she feel the same, cold helplessness toward him, watching an old friend regard her as a stranger?
“We do not often speak of that time,” Qural continued, “but circumstances have changed and we have been given a chance to help Marelle recover from what was done to her.”
Norris looked again at Qural, then toward Marelle. She showed little physical change, but her manner was not as he remembered.
“I don’t understand. Who are the bad people?” he asked, still looking only at Marelle.
Qural moved close and said, “The ones from Kol and Haleth’s government who wanted to hurt you, too.”
Norris understood at once—the Pod Superior, Eru Toa. Her voice was low and deliberate, as though she offered hints for Darrien alone, even as she spoke directly to Marelle. Norris’ memories of his last days with Qural began to flow freely and he watched the images wa
nder by, obliging him to relive Qural’s frenzied race to prepare him, knowing their time together was short. He watched in his own memories now restored as Kol tried her best to hold off Qural’s tears in the final moments before he stood for the last time in the Transceptor. They had been forced to hurry an event each would have given anything to avoid, but in the fading afternoon light, Norris remembered why they took his own memories of that lost time. They understood and decided to protect him so that he would not face the prospect of having to explain to his people an impossible tale he couldn’t prove.
But there, in the silence of the cottage, he saw also the terrible effect of his leaving and another life changed forever. He couldn’t have known Marelle had paid so terrible a price for his freedom, but Qural described the horror of her sister’s abduction. She explained what happened as Toa and the ‘bad people’ pulled Marelle from her bed on a dark night after Norris was sent back through the Plexus. He remembered Toa, but at the moment they forced Marelle into the control of their own Transceptor, Norris was stirring slowly in the Colonial Naval Medical Center in orbit high above New Hibernia. As he struggled to understand his unexplained blackout to the doctors, across the gulf of space Marelle was made to suffer the loss of her identity. He looked at her in silence, numb with sorrow for what he knew all too well she had endured. Qural waited until Norris looked away, held steady only by Rantara’s grasp.
“Marelle was the result of sending you back.”
Norris shook his head slowly.
“They were coming to Fells Moll,” he said with a distant voice. “Somebody warned you.”
“Yes,” she replied. “We did not have much time to prepare and say our goodbyes, but there was no other choice. When Toa discovered your absence, he became enraged. We believed it would end there, but he had other plans. They found and took Marelle instead.”
Norris blinked in disbelief. “What could they possibly gain by kidnapping her?”
Marelle only listened; she’d heard the story before. Qural looped her arm through Rentha’s as she continued, knowing a daughter had been tormented by what the Searchers had done to her mother.
“Toa meant to punish us for frustrating his attempt at selling you, but mostly, he hoped to use the theft of Marelle’s memories as a way to compel your return. All she ever knew had been taken from her and they reasoned we would force you to return in exchange for giving back her identity. Of course, we could not and Marelle has lived a new and different life since then.”
Norris nearly collapsed onto the arm of a wide chair, struggling to understand the misery they endured and from it, a new perspective on events he once regarded as a mere navigational anomaly. His life changed when he was misdiagnosed by the doctors with the effects of Zeleznik Syndrome—an unexplained, long-term but not to so terrible a degree. He, at least, knew who he was when he awoke in a hospital with no memory of where he had been. Norris turned to Qural with an expression that had become one more of sadness than confusion.
“Why did you bring me here? Why show me this?”
She went to Marelle before turning again to face Norris.
“When I told you days ago your journey was not yet complete—that I needed to ask of you a favor—Marelle’s condition was part of that request. The professor and I will explain it to you after we return home, Darrien; we will tell you what must be done.”
IT WAS NEARLY dark when they stepped from Rentha’s air car as the cool of evening moved up from the coast. In the chamber below, they found Haleth adjusting the Transceptor and when they settled, Tindas walked from the laboratory with an infopad for Norris.
“Darrien, we are going to brief you now, but before we begin, I know you need to understand what efforts are underway to enable your return to Earth space.”
Rantara went quickly to Norris, who nodded and said, “What have you got for me, Professor?”
“The Flash Trap now idling in the Plexus that brought you to us before, and again this time, is no longer functioning properly. We were tempted to destroy it seventeen years ago after you went back through, simply to ensure that Toa and his people could never find you again.”
“But you didn’t,” Norris said, sensing a larger story was about to unfold.
“It contravened Doctor Kol’s instructions, but I asked Haleth to leave the Trap in a dormant state instead.”
Kol moved slowly to where Haleth watched silently. “I was hesitant to leave an avenue open to them, Darrien, but Ommit understood my thoughts were driven by an emotional need to protect you from what we knew they would do if they were able to use the Trap as a locator. I was wrong and the Professor’s foresight has proven to be quite correct.”
Norris listened, but little made sense. “Is that why it found me again when my shuttle passed by this time?”
“Yes,” Kol answered. “As Qural said earlier, the machine was programmed to scan for your physiological signature, having identified and catalogued it seventeen years ago. In many ways, the Trap waited only for you. The Professor held out hope you might venture past the machine another time and perhaps, be returned to us. We did not think it would take so long.”
“I appreciate everything you have done for me,” Norris said, “but you wouldn’t have had to do anything if the Trap was destroyed after the first time. Why leave it in place?”
Qural had the answer. “Do you remember Haleth’s colleague, Settis?”
Another image appeared in Norris’ renewed memories of a Searcher who was a regular visitor to Qural’s laboratory, quiet and thoughtful, but revered for the seemingly limitless power of his intellect.
“Yeah,” Norris smiled. “Never said much, but when he spoke, everyone listened.”
“Settis came to visit on several occasions,” Qural continued, “but his purpose was not revealed to you. We have worked with him for many years on other projects—other specimen studies—but he is important to us for a more pressing reason and one that compelled Ommit to leave the Trap untouched.”
Qural moved close and said, “Settis warned us Toa had sent his people to take you.”
Tindas placed the infopad into a thin slot on the upper surface of a computer array’s control console. At once, a beach ball-sized holo-image representing a jumble of star systems appeared, turning slowly in three-dimensional form as the others gathered around to watch.
“Darrien, this display represents a part of the galaxy our astronomers call the Immediate Star Cluster. At first, it will appear unrecognizable to you because the perspective from Earth space is uniform and unchanged. Humanity is still relatively young and except for you, it has not yet ventured out from the Terran worlds far enough to see it from our position in space.”
Norris inspected the gleaming dots of light, wondering silently which of them might be his own Sun, now lost in an impossible field of other stars. Tindas keyed in a command and the holographic display stopped, hovering in its place. With a thin calibration instrument for a pointer, he circled a group of stars near the lower third of the display.
“This sector is home to our races—the Anash, Khorra Nu, Revallan and Porseth people, among others; we are here.”
He keyed in another command and the image rotated a half-turn, zooming in to reveal groupings of individual stellar systems. Norris smiled immediately; the projection was a precise recreation of star charts he’d seen a thousand times.
“This is the region where the Flash Trap intercepted you, Darrien; it is near to a Plexus thread you call the Bertrand Corridor at the extreme limits of Terran space. Does it look familiar now?”
“Yes,” Norris replied with a grin, “that’s it.”
“As you can see, the distance between Fells Moll and the Trap is vast, but in answer to your earlier concerns, you are certainly not ‘on the other side of the galaxy.’ We will return to this fact later, but I wanted you to see and understand that you are not lost.”
Norris looked to Qural, then at Tindas. The distinction was appreciated, but the countles
s billions of kilometers could just as easily have been a trillion times that number, so long as the Trap lay dormant. Tindas went on.
“When the Trap sent its signal to alert us it had returned you, Haleth saw at once something had gone wrong. Your vessel was obviously not orbiting over the planet as it had seventeen years ago, yet the machine’s warning protocols were active. Doctor Kol’s technicians investigated and found the machine was unable to establish the thread’s normal exit point near Fells Moll. Without that precise gate, the Trap had no terminus for your transit and it defaulted to a pre-programmed backup process, holding you in a time loop until it could find and identify another exit gate.”
“A time loop?” Norris frowned.
“Yes. The machine simply kept you on a constant circuit within the Plexus until at last, it diverted your vessel, ultimately releasing you near Karroba 118, deep inside Khorran space. Obviously, your experience at Bera Nima was the unfortunate product of that malfunction.”
“I don’t understand the loop part,” said Norris. “Does it make a difference?”
“Yes,” Tindas replied, “and that difference may be profound. Haleth’s calculations drawn from records in the Trap’s log files suggested the loop may have consumed far more time in steady space than previously thought.”
“How much time?” Norris asked with clear suspicion and worry.
Haleth stepped slowly forward to continue Tindas’ description.
“We cannot be certain, Darrien; there is no way of accurately predicting because the Trap is so damaged. The projections, however, raise the possibility you were looped for many months, and possibly years. Inside your vessel, only hours would’ve passed in much the same way they did when you first came to us seventeen years ago, but beyond the borders of the Plexus thread, time would have seemed, from your perspective, to accelerate.”
Echoes of Esharam Page 4
