by J. E. Gurley
“The future is created by the present. One can change it, but only through great effort and at nodes of commonality or during great events of potential shift. One such node will occur when we leave this galaxy. A marked event changes the future of this galaxy, shifts the balance of the Three Principles. If the effort is great enough ….”
“What can we do to change the future?”
“This we do not know. Open yourself to your heritage. Listen to your Spirit Guide. The Spirits live outside of time and space and see all. If your belief is strong enough, perhaps they will tell you.”
“Then we’re screwed,” Jazon muttered.
“If this is what you so believe …”
The rings shuddered underfoot, sending Jazon sprawling on the ground, then bouncing across the surface. In the light gravity, he righted himself quickly. “What was that?”
“The cable grows taut. We will soon begin the transfer to our new home. It is time.”
Jazon nodded. “I’ll tell the others.”
“I will accompany you to your ship and retrieve the material we need.”
As a man forced to walk to the gallows, Jazon followed the much more nimble Phyein back to the ship. He stopped once to look at the planet and wondered what it would look like to see the atmosphere ripped away and rushing at him at thousands of kilometers per second. If this failed, he would see soon enough.
18
“There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the soul, except in the Divine.”
Journal Henri Frederic Amiel
The Enclave Council had spoken. Lord Hromhada stood silently before them, head bowed, stripped of his power and humiliated before all present, his family prestige gone, his honor lost; still, he did not yield. Summoning a strength born of desperation, he raised his head and faced the Council, slowly looking into the eyes of the Five one-by-one, as he spoke.
“You think to humble me and remove me from office for what I have done, yet you quietly cheer at the results I have achieved. Do not think that I will go so quietly into oblivion. The Avatar is mine. I will determine her fate. If you attempt to strip me of my birthright, I will strip our people of our future.”
The crowd whispered among themselves. They had never seen defiance of the Council’s edicts. Such a breach of protocol was unheard of. Several Council members tore away from Lord Hromhada’s direct gaze and looked to their advisers trembling in the background. The head of the Council, Lord Hor Tatha of the Melus Enclave, pounded the table with his fist until the whispers ceased.
“You,” he pointed a shaky finger at Lord Hromhada, “You risk our very future on a whim,” he bellowed in rage. “We warned you to proceed slowly, but you refused our counsel. Now, the Avatar is possibly lost to us in this foolish venture to the Phyein. Your pride has overwhelmed your sense of duty and honor.”
“Honor?” Lord Hromhada spat at them. “You dare speak of honor. We made an Alliance with the Terrans on our ‘honor’, and on our great show of honor they pledged themselves to us.” He turned to the nobles admitted to the Council Chambers to witness his disgrace, ignoring those sitting in judgment of him. “The Terrans struggled past their differences and limitations to conquer space. Of all the races in this Outer Arm that bred the Fallusians and us, they are the only other race to do so. Surely, the wonder of this is not lost on us who helped a dozen fledgling species find wing.
“We were once a great people, a proud people with a heritage of giving. Now, upon our ‘honor’, we abandon them to see to our own Ascension, because we deem ourselves worthy. Who are we to place such high accolades on ourselves, accolades we have not yet earned? Our very plan for survival required the flesh and blood of the Terrans. We sought an easy solution, and our decision has returned to burn us while we complain of the fire. We who claim the right to eventual godhood have fallen into an abyss we have created with our greed and our lack of faith in our own gods. What right do we have to ascend under such false pretenses?”
He turned back to the Council. “The Tuss Enclave will not so easily abandon the principles by which we have so long lived. The Mahata Fey guides us to our end, and we see salvation there.”
The crowd erupted in an uproar, demanding an end to the Council. They spilled onto the Chamber floor, creating chaos. At a signal from the Council leader, armed guards entered the Chamber.
Seeing this, Lord Hromhada slipped quietly into the melee and walked calmly from the room. His supporters surrounded the confused guards, preventing them from pursuit. A fight erupted behind him, but he did not dare turn to look. He walked out unmolested because no one dared lay a hand on him.
He smiled to himself. Instead of the pain of dishonor he had expected, he felt release. It was a welcome sensation. In his heart, he had not rejected the things that brought honor and dignity to the Dastoran. In his quest for an Avatar, he had uncovered the very thing the Dastorans needed – their souls.
Two men appeared from the crowd and flanked him as he fled, Drones of his Enclave.
“We must hurry, Lord Hromhada,” one advised. “Council guards have orders to arrest you on sight.”
He simply nodded as they hurried him from the Council Building. The Council could do no less if they desired a continuance of their positions. Out in the streets, word of his speech had encouraged impromptu gatherings. Thousands of people, some from each Enclave, shouted their opinion or marched voicing their heart’s calling. The division surrounding the Dastoran future was growing wider. They were on the verge of civil war, a thing unheard of in six thousand years. Had he been the instigator? If so, it was simply from standing upon his principles, the principles with which the entire Dastoran race once proclaimed accord.
The Drone, Hrallithmar, shoved aside a man who began a tirade with Lord Hromhada, unaware of whom he was. “Your shuttle is nearby, Lord Hromhada,” he announced. “Should I call for more men?”
“No, they will not harm me,” he said, nodding at the crowd. “More uniforms would only intimidate the people. Let them argue among themselves and decide their own fate. For too long, others have decided it for them.
He looked at his guards. “Where do you stand?”
As one, they slapped their chest with closed fists. “We stand with you, my Lord.” He smiled at their lack of understanding of the critical moment they were living. As soldiers, he mused, they were used to obeying orders. This, then, was their choice. They had chosen him to decide for them. It was a weighty matter, but he had borne such matters without thinking for so long that he supposed he could bear it a short time still.
“Where is Metak?” he asked.
“It was he who sent us, my Lord. He waits on the shuttle.”
Faithful Metak. “One of you race ahead and make ready to take off as soon as I arrive. The Council will not delay long in sealing the port.” Scala was the only port on the planet Harthor capable of servicing Lord Hromhada’s shuttle. A dozen Thistleships orbited the planet, any one of which could turn its weapons on Lord Hromhada’s ship on Council orders. He only hoped the Council was as divided as the people appeared to be. This would give him the time he needed to escape.
But escape where? He would have to rally his forces in the face of an attack on his Enclave, but he dared not remove ships from the battlefront, thereby weakening the Alliance. If he followed the dictates of honor, he would have to survive without jeopardizing Dastoran space or the Alliance. He turned to the other guard.
“When we reach the shuttle, send a message in my name to the new fleet near Kosta. Order them to assemble at Ataxa, where it all began.”
The new ships were fitted with the Interstitial Drives, useless without Amissa, but they had weapons and crews loyal to the Tuss Enclave. Lord Hromhada could use them as chess pieces, a game of the Terrans he had come to enjoy for its strategies and intrigues, much like toying with the Council.
“My Lord,” Metak exclaimed breathlessly as Lord Hromhada and his escort entered the
ship. As soon as the doors sealed, he felt the subtle shift in gravity that meant the shuttle was in flight. His escort disappeared into the bridge to relay his command to the fleet.
“Metak, loyal friend, you have served me well today. Serve me now by bringing me the control for the device you planted on Occam’s Razor.”
Metak hurried away. The Council was correct in one thing. Without Amissa, they were lost, not for the reasons they assumed, but because she represented the future of Dastora. They had cloned her, abused, manipulated, and used her; and yet she still was more Dastoran than the Dastorans themselves. She was his daughter by association, and he had allowed his pride and the wishes of the Council to override his honor and place her in great danger. Her death would dishonor him, and more, it would break his heart.
For this reason – no, his reason had been more selfish – he had ordered Metak to install a link in the ship’s neuro-link that, when activated, compelled Amissa to return with Occam’s Razor. He had meant the device as a safety check against the Terrans, but now he would use it to save the Terrans and his daughter.
Daughter? By what right did he claim such familiarity? He had witnessed her birth three of her seven awakenings, but he had used her as he would any other clone, without thought, without pity. At what point had he begun to care? Perhaps it was the Terran’s doing, Jazon Lightsinger. He had not known his Amissa to be capable of such selfless devotion as to give her life for Lightsinger. It was more than had been bred into her, more than her teachers had intended. It had been an act of love, pure, simple, and without reservation. Love had left his life long ago. Such emotions were a detriment to a ruler who must determine the fate of an entire race.
His wife was a political pawn, so involved with her own idle pleasures that she paid little attention to her husband. His concubines were just that, flesh to use in any manner he chose. It had taken a slave clone to show him the full true measure of love, and until that moment, he had thought all such emotions lost to him. If any degree of love remained in him, then it was love for his people and the future for which they had striven. What right did he have to condemn his people to remain here in the middle of a war?
The question had plagued him for years, since he had first become aware of the Phyein. It had taken a Terran to supply the answer, a Terran who, despite his personal doubts, agreed to a mission that meant certain death because he refused to let a friend take the risk alone in his stead. He, Lord Hromhada of the Tuus Enclave, had the right to decide because one of the basic tenets of his race’s philosophy was at stake – to lift and succor the fledging races.
The Terrans were worthy of his respect.
The teachings of the Mahata Fey had guided Lord Hromhada his entire life. At what point had he lost his faith? What of the Phyein? What part were they playing in the scheme of things? More was happening than could be explained by the Three Principles or the Mahata Fey. The more things seemed to be in his control, the more they took on a life of their own. Was there a guiding hand in the universe? Even the Dastorans paid lip service to such deities upon religious holidays and in their temples, but in their hearts felt they had risen above such naïve notions. If there was a God controlling the actions of the universe, as many Terrans believed, what judgment was he holding for Lord Atha Hromhada? Had he rendered that judgment already in the form of Jazon Lightsinger?
Metak returned and handed him a small device, smaller than the palm of his hand. On its ornately carved surface was one stud.
“I do what I must for the future of my people,” he stated, tears rolling down his cheeks. Lifting his thumb, he pressed the button. “Forgive me,” he whispered and fell back in his seat, now empty of all emotions save sorrow.
Amissa lay on her bed, as still as a statue. Beside her, a Phyein used a slender fiber the diameter of a human hair clutched between two tiny claws to probe her brain. She made no sound, no complaint, but Jazon could sense the tension in her mind, as it sought solace in his. He felt it through the pressure of her strangely cold hand as she squeezed his tightly. Huumba and Ulrich were with him. To Jazon’s astonishment, Lyton had refused to meet the Phyein. He assumed it was because of a guilty conscience. After all, he carried the seeds of their destruction inside his body. Ulrich’s eyes flicked back and forth from the Phyein to Jazon, as if he expected Jazon to put an end to the procedure, but Amissa had insisted. Her desire to become human seemed paramount to her survival.
The Phyein was (Were?) speaking to all their minds in a kind of running commentary.
“I have located the precise location of the prescient material in the occipital cortex. It is amazingly complex.”
“Can you remove it safely?” Jazon spoke aloud so that his companions could hear.
“Yes. In fact, it is more than we will need for our tissue tanks. I can leave much of it in place.”
“No,” Amissa cried out with her mind. The Phyein recoiled from the intensity of her outburst. Jazon gripped her hand and squeezed tighter. “Take it all,” she continued. “I want it all gone from my mind.” Her insistence troubled Jazon, but he could well understand her desire to be free of her curse. Because of her prescient ability, she had endured six centuries of slavery.
“Very well.” The Phyein extruded a small probe. Jazon could hear a buzzing sound as the tip of the probe rotated so quickly that it was almost invisible. “This will not harm her,” the Phyein reassured them, but Jazon felt his bile rise in his throat as the pitch of the probe changed when it entered the flesh inside her nose. After a few seconds, it withdrew, trailing a few drops of blood behind it. A second filament that opened and closed like a mouth followed the path of the first. Amissa began to tremble on the bed, and then relaxed as if satisfied the operation had been a success.
The Phyein withdrew the probe and emptied its contents into four small, metallic boxes. It handed one to Jazon. It was cool to the touch, a stasis chamber. “Return this to Lord Hromhada. Perhaps he will realize in time that this is the true goal for which he has been seeking.”
Amissa opened her eyes and smiled. “Thank you, Jazon,” she whispered, and then convulsed on the bed, her back arching until she was touching the bed only by her heels and the back of her head.
“What did you do?” he screamed at the Phyein.
“This not our doing,” it replied. One of its legs touched Amissa’s head. “A deeply submerged, post-hypnotic suggestion has been triggered.”
“By you?”
“No, the source is external.” The Phyein went silent for a few agonizing seconds while Jazon tied to comfort Amissa. A black tendril shot out from the Phyein in a quick blur and pierced the wall of Amissa’s room. It withdrew a small device gripped in its pincers. “This device has been activated by a tight-beam message through your ship’s communications system. It triggered the suggestion in her mind.”
“What is it?”
The Phyein went silent again as it probed Amissa’s mind. “She was commanded to Skip the ship back to a designated point. She is struggling to override the command.”
“Can she?”
“No. It will soon render her unconscious, and the Skip engines will activate anyway. She can fight it off for a few hours at best, but it will cost her to do so.”
“Then do something,” Jazon shouted.
Another filament shot out and pierced Amissa’s spine. She immediately stopped convulsing. “I have triggered a small electrical charge in her central nervous system to immobilize her body. The struggle continues within her mind, but it will not punish her physical being so severely. I must return with this material. We leave soon.”
“You’ll leave us here?”
“I will deliver this sample, and then all our energy will be directed toward freeing your ship before the Cha’aita’s arrival.”
“We’re helpless,” he shouted.
“Link to her mind. Help her.”
Jazon felt a sense of hopelessness. “What can I do?”
“Have you learned nothing, S
pider Brother?” the Phyein chided. “Remember the Blessingway.”
“What … the Blessingway? What good will that do?”
“Have faith in your Spirits and in yourself. If you lose these, does it truly matter if you return?”
Faster than he could have imagined, the Phyein scurried out of the ship using walls and ceilings with equal ease.
Ulrich looked up at him expectantly.
“What?” he shot at his friend with equal amounts of anger and fear.
“Do something,” Ulrich pleaded.
Jazon closed his eyes, bowed his head, and shook it side to side. “I can’t.”
Huumba gripped his shoulder. “Do not let her die. Our people die with her.”
“What can I do?” he cried out. He was lost, floundering in a sea of despair.
“Believe in yourself,” a voice entered his mind, a parting gift from the Phyein. Calm descended over him as if poured from a vessel. He remained fixed as awareness enveloped him. This, then, was his crux, his node that could change the future. Should he fail, all of them, possibly the entire civilized Local Arm, would die.
“No pressure here,” he groaned. He closed his eyes and tried to remember the hundreds of chants of the Blessingway. Which ones were pertinent to this situation? If only his father were here now.
“I am always with you, my son. Did I not promise you so?”
The words warmed his mind, swept away the ice-cold tendrils of fear that were worming their way through his consciousness. “Father?”
“Yes, my son. We are here.”
“We?”
“I speak of all our people who have journeyed into the Fifth World to live with the Great Spirit Fathers, my father and his father before him. Open your mind. Remember your training.”
“It’s been too long. I can’t.”
Suddenly, he was a young recruit in Marine boot camp. He stood in a line with twenty others facing his drill sergeant.
“Chief,” the gruff, loud-mouthed DI shouted. “If you tell me you can’t one more time, you’ll think Custer’s come back to personally stomp your useless redskin ass. Now, are you gonna’ hump it across that rope, or am I gonna’ have to do a war dance on your sorry ass?”
