by J. E. Gurley
“Time exists for each of us. Ours extends far into the past and only briefly into the future. You have your duty, and I have my responsibility to my creators.”
Her words meant nothing to him. He dismissed them. “I won’t lose you,” he whispered. “Not again.”
“No, I’ll always be with you in some way, in your mind.”
“No. I mean you. I won’t lose you.”
“Oh, Jazon.”
She broke free of his mind and her body slipped from beneath his. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly. Like a mother with her infant, she gently rocked him. He felt her mind touch his in various places, and he grew weary. His eyes closed and he dreamed.
“Ya’at’eeh, young hataalii. Greetings.” the tarantula called just as he was about to squash it with his palm.
Jazon glanced down at his young, naked body covered with the grime of days of prayer and fasting. He could smell the sharp, acrid scent of accumulated sweat and filth. His mouth felt sticky as he answered. “Ya’at’eeh, spider brother.”
“I have come in answer to your prayers, but you choose to remain ignorant and remove me from your path.”
“I prayed for a powerful spirit guide, spider brother – the eagle or the bear.”
“Yes, these spirit guides are strong, but they will not help you on the path you must take. The spider is nimble and quick, courageous when threatened. It is a builder, and that is the path you must take.”
“What path is that, spider brother?”
“To the stars.”
“But I am a hataalii, or will be. My place is here with my people.”
“Your place was chosen long before you were born. The stars themselves chose you.”
“But what of my people, my family?”
“I offer you a gift, young hataalii. Na’. Take it.”
He felt a sharp pain as the fangs of the spider sank into his flesh.
“Now, kill me to free my spirit.”
He squashed the spider. “What is your gift, spider brother?” he asked of the spider’s spirit.
“Forgiveness,” it answered in his mind.
The scene changed. He now stood before his father, dejected, bruised, and sick. “I am no true Diné, father. I have seen no spirits.”
“My son, the spirits are always with us. You must open your eyes to them.”
He had just returned from the funeral for his mother. The entire tribe had come to show their respects. He was alone with his father, bitter at her needless death.
“I’m going to join the Marines and leave this place, father. There are no spirits here, only dust and unpleasant memories. We are so eager to accept the leavings of the biligana. The White Man rules the universe. They don’t believe in spirits or superstitious garbage. I’ll be a Marine. No one cares what color your skin is if you’re a Marine.”
His father nodded sadly. “Go, then, my son. Perhaps there you will find your spirit guide.”
“There are no spirits,” he answered stubbornly.
His father’s face faded from sight as the bus sped away, kicking up a cloud of Arizona dust.
Jazon awoke feeling refreshed, as if he had slept for ages. He was alone in bed, but his memories remained. He looked at the palm of his hand and saw the two tiny marks still visible even after all these years, a sign of his acceptance by his spirit guide.
“Ahe’ee, spider brother. Thank you.”
He showered and dressed, feeling better than he had in ages. He forewent the use of the depilatory cream, deciding instead to let his hair grow back. He no longer felt a need to impress Lord Hromhada. The fine hairs presented scarcely a shadow on his scalp, barely palpable as he ran his hand through it.
He was distressed that Amissa persisted in her belief that her destiny mirrored that of the Dastorans, but he could change that. He knew his own destiny would unfold as written without the necessity of his understanding. He had found the faith that he had thought he had lost as a young boy. It had been with him all along, just disguised as reckless abandon.
He was a man with a purpose. He had made two promises that he would keep. He would get Ulrich to Earth, and he would save Amissa. He had made no promise to himself but the fulfillment of these two. As far as Lord Hromhada, all bets were off.
Before returning to the bridge, he stopped by Lyton’s quarters. He found the professor’s door open and him sitting before a bottle of Dastoran ale as if contemplating it. Lyton grinned as Jazon walked in.
“Good to see you, Jazon. Did you know Dastoran ale tastes like Earth shoe polish? Well, it does. It is just about all I have left to drink. I should have planned this adventure better.”
“It’s my fault, Lyton. We should have been there by now.”
Lyton held up his index finger and waved it back and forth in admonishment. “Now, now, Jazon. It isn’t your fault. I think our late Trilock friend played his part in this as well.”
“Then you approve of his death?” he asked in surprise.
“It was inevitable. The Dastorans hate the Trilock, the Trilock hate the Dastorans, and you, Jazon, despise them both.” He grinned. “I would not wish to be your enemy.”
“I didn’t kill him, Huumba did,” he protested.
“And now the two of you are cozy friends. Don’t believe it, my friend. Huumba will carry out Lord Hromhada’s orders even if he opposes them.”
“My death?”
Lyton shrugged. “Probably. You want his AI, ands she wants you. Lord Hromhada will lose face, possibly his position, if you fail to bring her back.”
Jazon sat down across from Lyton. “I must ask you something. Were you sent to prevent the Phyein from contaminating this ship, or were you sent to destroy them?”
He noticed Lyton’s nostrils flare briefly, and his eyes focused on Jazon with an intensely that Jazon found uncomfortable. “My mission is two-fold. If the Phyein are hostile, I am to destroy them. If they powerful enough to aid us against the Cha’aita, then they are a threat to the Alliance, and I am to destroy them.”
“That doesn’t leave you much wiggle room does it?”
Lyton shook his head. “Twenty years. Twenty years I worked with Meta-Systems Transitions and the Three Principles. I believe in them.” He pounded his fist on the table for emphasis. “I wanted to study them, enlist their help if possible, but the authorities on Earth are frightened of their potential. The Alliance is falling apart. The Trilock have never been trustworthy, the Mrumban are tapped out militarily, and the Dastorans are looking for a way out. We’ll soon be on our own, and Earth can’t afford to fight two enemies. They insist on the elimination of the Phyein.”
“Even though the Phyein might be able to help us?”
“Especially so,” Lyton sneered.
Jazon shook his head sadly. “Perhaps the Phyein deserve to take over. There doesn’t seem to be much difference between us and the others, does there?”
“We have you.” Lyton smiled.
Lyton’s words startled Jazon. “Me? What good am I?”
“I don’t know, but Lord Hromhada sets a great deal of store in you, enough to entrust you with this ship and his precious Avatar.”
“He knows I’ve got nowhere to go. I’m a caged bird, squawking loudly but flying nowhere.”
“Ah, but you do.”
“Where?” Was Lyton offering him a way out of this mess?
“Occam’s Razor,” Lyton reminded him. “With it, you and the girl could go anywhere.”
“Lord Hromhada has set a few safeguards against that. One is Amissa herself.”
“Her programming is flawed. Even Lord Hromhada has seen that. They made her the perfect woman in order to remove her humanity, to make her a machine designed for their purposes. Even a machine can have purpose. Look at the Phyein.”
“So, Amissa could remain …” His throat tightened on the word.
“Whole,” Lyton finished for him. “Yes.”
His mind flushed with thoughts of victory. If Amissa
could overcome her misplaced allegiance to Lord Hromhada, she could become a potent Artificial Intelligence and remain an individual.
“I see,” Jazon said.
Lyton stood, a bit wobbly on his feet. “I must search for something better to drink. I’m afraid I will not survive drinking this swill.”
“I have a bottle of vodka in my quarters. I’ll send it to you.”
“Ah, my friend, that would be delightful.” He sat back down heavily.
“Thank you, Lyton. Promise me you won’t do anything hasty without notifying me first.”
“If you send me the vodka, I will promise.”
“It’s a deal then.”
He left feeling a little more secure. He had suspected Lyton’s presence on Occam’s Razor was more as executioner than as ambassador. Lyton didn’t have the heart of an assassin, and his heavy burden had altered his face. Jazon suspected it would take little effort to talk Lyton out of his role as executioner when the time came. Whatever else the Phyein were, he didn’t think they were patently evil. Only an organic intelligence could claim that dubious honor. Still, they could present a threat. His was a narrow path along a deep chasm.
Huumba and Harthim were together in their cabin. Huumba answered Jazon’s buzz and opened the door.
“Captain Lightsinger. Please come in,” he said as he stepped aside. By the cold, hard look on Harthim’s face, Jazon knew not all was forgiven, but at least Huumba seemed jovial enough.
“I came by to ask you a question, Huumba. I ask you on your honor to answer truthfully.”
Huumba’s face tightened, and Harthim’s hand brush the hilt of his knife.
“Ask,” Huumba said, spreading his arms wide.
“Your reason for coming was to kill the Trilock. Will you kill me regardless of the outcome of this mission?”
Huumba motioned for Harthim to relax, but the Drone sat uneasily on the edge of his seat, prepared to attack if necessary.
“At first, yes, I would have. Lord Hromhada feared you would steal his ship and his AI and sent me to stop you.”
“You’ve changed your mind?”
“I am … uncertain. It was easy to hate you Terran. Your mere presence was an insult, a reminder that no Dastoran can successfully link with Amissa. My brother tried and died. I was prepared to try, but Lord Hromhada forbade it. Your presence lessened me. Yet I have found with you a kinship I did not anticipate or desire, more than our mutual hatred for the Trilock.
“My people have existed for many millennia, but yours have known space for less than six centuries. Still, in many ways, you exceed us. You fight with courage and tenacity, and your spirit is indomitable. Your star rises while ours wanes. The Council seeks solitude so that our race can attain Ascension, a purely spiritual existence. I fear in doing so, we will lose that which makes us worthy of Ascension, our honor.”
“I think the Phyein may provide the answer we both seek,” Jazon admitted.
“In what way?”
“I’m not sure. It’s just a feeling, but I think they sought me out for a reason. I find it difficult to believe that reason could be hostile.”
He shrugged. “If you are correct, then this mission will be successful. If not ….”
“I will take Amissa from Lord Hromhada. She’s human, not Dastoran property, and she’s not the answer you seek. She can’t be. If this were the right way, you wouldn’t need a Terran to succeed. Lord Hromhada acknowledges a belief in the Three Principles, yet he goes against their very foundation in trying to turn Amissa into your Avatar. She has no free will in the matter. In six hundred years, you’ve been unable to breed out her humanity. You could never make a machine out of her. She understood all this some way, but I didn’t. Now I do. You will never have the Avatar you seek, but with Earth’s help, you could have a fleet of Interstitial Drive ships.”
“How is this possible?”
Jazon saw the Drone’s skepticism surface. He understood. Six hundred years is a long time to put all your hopes on a project just to see it fail.
“Many Terrans are telepathic to a degree. Dastoran technology could enhance that without attempting to dehumanize the person – Dastoran ships with Terran navigators, not AIs but living, breathing pilots.”
“We would be dependent on you.”
Jazon could hear the edge of contempt in his voice. He smiled. “According to the Three Principles, you always will be.”
“I must ponder this new information, Captain Lightsinger. There is truth in your words, but before truth must come trust. This, I fear, will come harder.”
“One of our poets, Alfred Lord Tennyson, said, ‘... we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill’.”
Huumba smiled. “We say, ‘The unattainable requires perseverance’.”
“Then you will help me convince Lord Hromhada?”
Huumba was silent for a moment. He cast a quizzical glance at Harthim. “My duty is to Lord Hromhada, but I will consider your proposition. It is not my wish to kill you.”
“I’ll take that as a maybe. What about your friend there?” Jazon jerked his thumb at Harthim who sat with a scowl on his face.
“Harthim will not act without my word.”
“Good. I think we will need each other before this is through.”
He left the two Dastorans to discuss his fate. He felt he had reached at least an uneasy truce with Huumba. He knew Lord Hromhada was an obstinate man who faced the loss of much of his power if he agreed to Jazon’s proposition, but even Lord Hromhada should be able to see the inevitable failure of the Dastorans' plan. He knew Amissa may be more than human, but she would never be less than one, as if some genetic switch bestowed humanity on an otherwise soulless being. It was one-way only. Perhaps the Great Spirit connected man to the Earth and Sky as his people believed. Ulrich, he knew, would call it the soul.
He had doubted Amissa’s decision because of his emotional baggage, but in spite of her emotions, she could see the truth, the flaw in Lord Hromhada’s handiwork. The more he tried to control her, the less control he had. The more the Dastorans manipulated her neural pathways, the more chances those same pathways could mutate and divide, yielding unexpected results. The obstacles to Jazon’s plan were falling by the wayside. The Trilock ambassador was gone. He had earned Huumba’s grudging respect. Amissa remained, so far at least, fully human.
Now, all that remained was surviving the mission.
With Amissa linked into the ship once more, Jazon felt confident enough to try Interstitial Space. The Skip went smoothly and this time, linked to Amissa, she could show him how she could see the path far beyond the capability of the ship’s sensors. She didn’t as much see the path as predict what would be there at any given point in time. He was sure there was some mathematical formula to this trick, but it was beyond him.
During the next eight hours, they traveled farther than they had since leaving Lord Hromhada at Lahhor. The dimension they entered was even more beautiful than the last. Great swirls of color like galaxy-wide rainbows swathed the space between galaxies, dark reds, and blues – the corresponding dark matter of their own dimension. Jazon could almost see how it bound the fabric of space together, as if it were muscle and sinew, and the galaxies were organs in the great universal body.
White holes erupted like geysers, spewing cosmic material from some unknown dimension into this one, recycling stars. It would take centuries to explore it thoroughly. Lyton would have happily stranded himself in an escape pod with a telescope and a writing pad. The scientist’s moral dilemma seemed forgotten, as he busily jotted down notes and ran from scanner to scanner.
Jazon joined Amissa through the neuro-link and swam the seas, as if they were porpoises playing in the bow wave of a schooner. His mind raced streaking comets and eruptions of cosmic rays from white hole geysers. They stopped to dance on the brink of a black hole so massive it obscured the center of the galaxy. Jazon suspected that Amissa had chosen this dimension not for its quicker path to t
he Phyein, but for its sheer beauty. As he swam the depths of space around the ship and tasted the waters of blue green worlds, he began to understand the scope of magnificence of the Dastoran Interstitial Drive. It would not only allow passage to anywhere in the universe, as the Dastorans had hoped, it would open up the myriads of galaxies in an incalculable number of universes that bubbled off our own like blisters on the skin or psuedopods growing from an amoeba. With such a ship, he and Amissa could be the King and Queen of their own private universe.
A series of blinking lights caught his attention. He pointed them out to Amissa. “What are those?”
“They are ships in real space.”
“How can they be in real space and still be visible here?”
“They are surrounded by very dense gravitational fields.”
Jazon tried to stare at them, but they were beyond his sight. “What are they?”
“Cha’aita ships.”
“Cha’aita … Any chance they’re normal phenomena?” he asked Amissa.
“No. The spectrum indicates a high content of exotic metals as well as a continuing fusion reaction.”
“Cha’aita ships,” Jazon repeated. They were no match for more Cha’aita ships.
“Yes, their configuration matches closely with the Cha’aita ship we destroyed.” Side-by-side comparisons of metallic spectrum analysis and energy grids floated before Jazon for him to examine.
“Are they waiting for us?” he asked.
“No. I believe they are derelict ships. The energy readings are too high to allow organic life to survive”.
“The Phyein?”
“Possibly,” Amissa answered. “It is impossible to ascertain from this distance.”
“Take us within a parsec and drop into normal space. We’ll play it safe for now.”
Almost without transition, they returned to normal space. Ahead, he could see three pinpoints of light, almost like tiny stars.
“Sensors indicate nothing, but I feel the presence of Phyein there,” Amissa offered pointing toward a small speck in the distance. “That is the Phyein home world.”
