by G W Langdon
“Free? I am trapped here, more than any of you.”
She circled closer. “We’re all from another planet and trapped here against our will.”
He laughed, goading her rising anger, in the hope she’d slip and tell him the real reason she wanted to go to the space palace.
“You undeserving, little man,” she said. “For reasons completely beyond me, you’ve been blessed with Potential to rise above this mess and change the world.”
A heavy wave of doubt rolled through him. “I can’t do that.”
“Regardless, you’ll be leaving on Abellia in twelve days.”
“Twelve days!”
“You must try harder. The fates of present and future worlds depend upon you. We cannot afford failures between now and the Space Palace. I suggest you start preparing for the next phase of your training.” She picked up the embroidery hoop and ended a running stitch. “I know this is a lot to take in, but you’ll come to see it’s the only way. You’ll be free when we return to continue as before with Sarra, unless Reuzk has other plans for her.”
Tom turned away, clenching his jaw tight, and leaning hard on his staff as the weight of saving the galaxy’s oppressed worlds settled on his shoulders.
#
Ba’illi was gone, but his double-six dice remained on the open side of the board and his markers were unmoved. She’d been watching them and summoned him away otherwise he’d still be waiting there, unable to leave the game uncompleted.
Tom poured a tall glass of juice and sipped the froth off the top. He placed the glass on the side table and flopped into the bioMemic chair. There were no clouds in the blue sky, but that could easily be untrue if she chose it to be. Nothing made sense anymore. He reached across for another sip of juice, barely able to raise his arm against his own tired, feeble existence.
He rested the staff in his lap and ran his fingers back and forth lightly over the carvings, seeking solace in the myths, symbolisms, and histories behind the sufferings of the spirit. Choen’s austere life cultivated a blessed simplicity that he could now only dream of. Where had he gone so wrong? Why did he seek out the impossible, when he knew no good could come from a distracted life of thinking?
He blinked and blinked again, and his heavy lids closed, against an outside world that was too much to bear. His breathing slowed and his mind, bereft of the safe harbor of certainty, slipped its mooring and drifted away on a friendly, uncaring breeze.
The beam from the lighthouse at the mouth of the harbor flashed on an outcrop of half-hidden rocks and disappeared into the fog rolling in across the deep, endless ocean.
Gentle waves carried the boat to the shore, and he hopped out, careful not to get his bare feet wet and dragged the boat further up the beach. Up ahead inside the forest line, an immense tree reached into the sky. Bigger even than the tree in Earthworld. The higher he looked the taller it grew until it rivaled the skyReachers of Nu’hieté with their tops in the clouds. He walked closer and the colored vines that spiraled up the trunk were endless lines of words, tracing over the sturdy lower limbs then upwards in a raging firestorm of the alphabet. In a matter of moments, the entire tree groaned under the weight of millions of words. The Tree of Knowledge whispered him closer to the answers of every question he needed to untangle his mind.
Closer, closer.
The finest branches curled their soft leaves around in a loving embrace.
We are the only true path to the peace you seek more than anything else in the world. We are the way.
The branches caressed tighter and small images formed on the leaves, indefinite at first: his mother, Mary, doing the dishes; William returning home from war—alone. Frank as a teenager was on another leaf; Dougal howling to the ringing church bell; Marco neighing while he waited for his feed bag to be filled with oats; the fields and low hills of Bentley. The old oak tree.
Sarra reached out and they hugged and kissed. She drew back and ran away through a curtain of falling leaves. Thousands of leaves swirled around him and fell to the ground, burying his feet in a carpet of colored memories.
He struggled through the rising vortex of the wispy branches of ideas and opinions. Thorns sprouted on the stringy branches of prejudice and tore at his clothes. He prised the thickening cocoon apart, but the branches of religion, politics, education, and science wrapped tighter. Don’t risk it all. You’re safe with us. The branches turned rigid and bound him to the spot.
Irresistible desires, alluring promises, and unsolved puzzles clawed at his thumping chest. A siren call beckoned over the rising wind. Stay with us. We’ll keep you safe. There’s nothing else but us. We are everything.
A thin beam of light from a faraway lighthouse pierced the tight-knit thicket and a shadowy form passed to the side. The jungle of entangling branches slid off its silky skin. At the edge of the river, the creature that he now recognized from the church vision stopped and turned its head to face him straight on. After a brief appraisal, it eased away and swam through the roiling torrent, propelled across by its long tail. It clambered up a shallow bank on the other side onto a barren plain, leaving deep claw marks in the soft mud.
A faraway firelight surged into the heavens, as if stoked higher and hotter by giant bellows. The flames wisped into lightning that splattered across the starry galaxy. Dark, ominous cracks splintered across the heavens like fracturing sea ice before an immense force. The Hordes of Hell poured through depthless chasms, and demons on monsters rode forth upon braided rivers of black-on-black.
He tore free from the clinging web and stumbled to the bank of the impossible river. There was no boat or any other way to cross over. He dipped his toe in the red, snaking river and it burned his soft skin. He kicked away and clung to the tendril of Frank laughing then reached down the bank. A clambering thicket of memories and desires reached around and a tightly curled fern frond held out the golden ring he’d given Sarra.
The creature left the river’s edge and sped towards the lighthouse.
Don’t turn from me.
A golden sun ascended above the desolate plain.
What do you want from me?
Hope.
The vines smothered him in a loving embrace and guided him from the river.
He broke free and ran down the beach to where the boat should’ve been. A mermaid sat on wet rocks that glistened in foam above the angry sea. She twirled her hair and beckoned him to stay with her. She promised she’d keep him safe.
Get away from me! I cannot stay here.
He frantically looked up and down the beach, swinging his arms wildly as he turned this way and that for the boat that would certainly take him home. Breaking glass rang in his ears…
Tom braced himself on the staff and lifted out of the chair. Next to him on the floor was a mess of broken glass in a puddle of juice. He looked at the almost-finished backgammon game. The nightmare was over, but the terrifying depth of his suffering seized his soul. To get into the Light he had to abandon the realm of knowledge through which he perceived and understood the world that defined who he was. Did he stay in the bounded world of distraction and illusion, or strike out in hope for the uncharted shores of the unbounded and eternal? He gripped the Staff of Choen in a tight fist and raged to the heavens, “I will seek out the Light.”
#
Queen Lillia dropped the embroidery hoop and stared at the blood on her pricked fingertip. Specks of rainbow reflected from the shaking Shimmer Tree light danced around the chamber.
President Lauzen’s pen twitched across the page mid-sentence like a seismograph needle registering an earthquake.
Two hundred light-years away, deep within its lair, Decay flared incandescent.
Chapter 31
“Full Indigo stealth.”
Reuzk steered Sirion away from the Base and set a high-altitude course beyond the crater rim. He turned to Amie, sitting in the cockpit, next to him. Her symmetrical features and functional uniform were classic military—efficient and pract
ical, nevertheless, it was unusual to see her dressed as a soldier and even rarer to see her on the outside. The violet badge on her clean-cut jacket marked her as high-end Federation— not to be messed with.
“I hope we find Jbir’s failSafe,” he said, “and get the full story behind why he left Heyre. Time’s running out to connect her to Decay.”
“What makes you think the shielded failSafe is in Kaleria, other than Senator Telion?”
“Just a hunch, but the closer we get, the more Kaleria feels like the perfect place to hide from prying eyes.”
“I can see the logic. The ‘unreported’ repeater station indicates there might be something buried deep inside Kaleria, but it’s a hopeful prediction.”
“We’re running out of time. Are you making progress in tracking Jbir’s neurals? We wouldn’t have to bother with his body if we had what used to be inside his head.”
“Nothing yet, but I have got a hunch that it’s somewhere in the oldest part of Lyonia.”
He smiled at her quick wit. “I hope you’re not offended I don’t let you fly, but old habits die hard.”
“None taken,” Amie replied. “I know you don’t fully trust me.”
“What’s it like being up here—in a body?”
“I’ve done this before,” she replied, “but I prefer to work on the inside.” Amie squeezed her hands. “It’s strange having a biological casing.”
“You’re lucky. You’re wearing an Envoy-rated Outer.”
“It must be a strain having an injured body or living with impairment.” She shuddered. “You can keep the pain.”
“You get used to the shortcomings. What choice is there? And don’t say get another body. No thanks. This one does me just fine. Tell me, how did you find Senator Telion in Kaleria—it’s a private facility?”
“I record everything. I hacked the security system the day before Kaleria opened then archived the unprocessed dataStrings for long-term storage—in case I ever needed to search through them on a later date. However, because the dataStream was stored as a raw feed without tags I had to search through centuries of data the old-fashioned way. Those power shortages last week…”
“That was you?”
“I borrowed processing capacity from the ‘civilian’ sector to accelerate the Jbir sub-routine. I discounted the time after Jbir’s departure from Heyre and concentrated on the time before this point.”
He checked the lightScreen for nearby craft and circled lower across the river. “Do you ever get sad or have regrets in there?”
“They’re not in my nature, but sometimes I get lonely. My family are all gone now.”
“What about Titus on Progeny?”
“A mother ship is nothing compared to a planet. I’m the last of my kind.”
“I know the feeling.”
“Kaleria facility up ahead,” Sirion informed them.
Reuzk landed Sirion in the abandoned historic Kaleria Asylum nestled within the towering Utwa trees of Nu’hieté’s second oldest district. The Kaleria compound covered one hundred acres of domestic dormitories for the staff, clerical support buildings, and specialized clinics to process the overflow of patients from the five-storied psychiatric hospital.
“This place gives me the creeps,” he said, looking around the unkempt lawns and overgrown hedges. “Too many blind spots.”
“That’s why I’m here—on the ground.”
Mocking, nonsensical stone faces stared down from beneath the hospital’s tall parapets. Black windows, too dusty to let sunlight shine through, dotted the brick walls like soulless eyes. Old paint flaked off the crumbling wooden frames and rusting steel structures.
“Only someone as crazy as Jbir would think this made a good place to hole up.”
“Perhaps, because Jbir thought it was the last place a logical thinking entity might look.” The secrets of Kaleria Asylum had grown over the centuries into disturbing urban myths that deterred all but the most desperate thrill seeker, the plain foolhardy—or those with dark secrets to keep. “Maybe Jbir wasn’t so crazy after all.” He loaded up and lowered his visor. “There could be trouble inside.”
Amie copied him and the Vipers upgraded to Magenta.
He kicked in the front door and a rush of imprisoned air escaped as he stepped over the mat of windblown leaves. Chairs lined the walls where the infirms had once sat in the sun and watched the world pass by.“Viper 80, go ahead and sweep for explosives. 86, stay behind us and run a deep survey in case there’s an ambush.” He turned to Amie, her suit registering dull black in the strangled light. How long to grow a body in a hibernation cocoon if you’re starting with cells seeded from cryogenic storage with enough awareness and capability to locate a neural blueprint?”
“Three times longer than a grow takes from a fresh genetic source. Out here, it also depends on the quality of the cocoon and the bioJacket.”
“Using the best technology we have.”
Amie turned to him in surprise. “That’s a bold assumption.
“Jbir had indigo bioPods on StarTripper—amongst other forbidden military technology,” he said. “I’ll assume he had an indigo cocoon?
“Depends on the emergence priority settings.”
“Jbir’s main goal would be to stay hidden and emerge fit for the fight.”
“If the Dawn Wall Protocol triggered a stealth setting, then using an indigo cocoon with full bioJacket nutrient support—maybe two hundred and ninety days.”
“And ten days to incept the neurals,” Reuzk said to himself. “How long since we brought StarTripper to Heyre?”
“Three hundred and seven days, sir.”
“He’s not fully out yet, otherwise we would have heard how the mighty Jbir rides again.” Reuzk shook his head. “I hope we’re not too late.”
He scuffed the grimy wall as he pushed aside a broken medical bed missing a wheel blocking the way. The place would have shined in its best days, as only sanitized tiles and over-scrubbed glass could beneath over-bright ceiling lights. Even after all this time, the corridors smelled of death cleaned up. Dark emotions from unforgivable acts of torture in the dungeons of Emperor Tilaxian broke to the surface. Other-worldly screams rattled his nerves. He clamped his teeth and pressed on past the message scrawled on the water-stained walls by a long-dead infirm, ‘Decay comes for us all.’
“Is everything all right, sir?” Amie asked.
“Are there other facilities similar to this?”
“None. Kaleria was the last to close. It was already in decline after the switch to the cheaper alternatives, but seven hundred and sixty-four years ago, the worst recorded storm to hit Nu’hieté outside the Gania super-cycle damaged Kaleria too much for regeneration. It’s only been left standing because Senator Telion gave Kaleria a historical building status with an Indigo preservation order.”
“And then jumped in a lava pit. Such a tragic death would’ve compelled the council to do the right thing and preserve Kaleria as a legacy. We’re onto something here.”
They followed the Viper into a dank, windowless hall devoid of light except for thin beams of sun coming through the holes in the ceiling. The Viper shone a fireLight around the hall of decrepit cocoons.
“There was a bit more going on here than the reGen of damaged brain sections,” he said, examining the small skeleton inside a shriveled cocoon. “Where exactly is this mausoleum we’re looking for?”
“It’s here, but not in the Kaleria blueprints.”
“Then how are we to find it? This place is a warren of dead ends.”
Amie tapped her badge and a lightMatrix beamed from the central eye.
Reuzk circled the lightMatrix, kicking the rubble out of his way. “Senator Telion had legitimate reasons to come here. A perfect cover.”
“He wouldn’t have known I hacked Kaleria.”
“Jbir may have been a failSafe in more ways than one. Maybe this was Telion’s way of passing on his secrets from beyond the grave—not that the poor fool ever go
t one.”
“If I didn’t know you better, I might think you’re going to tag her to Decay, one way or another.”
“I don’t underestimate her.”
The holographic Telion walked off and they followed at a discreet distance, as though he might halt and ask them what they were doing there. He got into the lift and pressed the button to go down.
“Stop the reRun.” He peered inside the lift and to the stairs. “We’ll take the lift,” he said to the Vipers. “You take the stairs and we’ll meet at the bottom.”
Amie placed the badge on the lift wall, and they squeezed in either side of Telion.
The lift rode down and clunked on the bottom of the shaft. Amie mimicked Telion with a real identity card as he inserted his card into a shielded slot. The lift restarted and stopped one floor lower and the projected rear wall panel opened. Senator Telion blinked out as he stepped into a tunnel that didn’t officially exist.
“Let’s hope Captain Jbir’s in there,” Reuzk said, shining the laser sight down the tunnel. What happens now?”
“I don’t know. This is as far as I can go with outside support. We’re on our own from here.”
“Before we lose the outside, were there any old spies from the early days operating at this time?”
“Still alive? I monitored the funeral of Heratu. It was a large gathering of other pirates paying their respects and those further down the data chain wanting to impress, but there was one who might’ve genuinely known Jbir. Captain Tiekur is quite possibly the last survivor of the old spies.”
“Another lineage coming to an end. Run a search of Tiekur’s meetings for the last seventeen days.”
“Am I looking for anyone in particular?”
“We both know who.”
A moment later, Amie said, “Ba’illi met Tiekur, fourteen days ago. How did you know?”
“He’s a bad liar. I thought the sneak was holding back on me when I asked if he had any news.”
Amie’s eyelids flickered under her visor.
