by G W Langdon
Tom looked at the packet on the side table. Choen was right, maybe he should end the habit. But not just yet. He leaned away to keep the reflection from the prince’s shield out of his eyes.
“The knight must think there’s trouble ahead,” Choen said.
“Maybe—the shield’s part of my training,” Tom said, sitting back down. “I don’t know what’s true anymore.”
“Your room was tidy, but now I see are half-finished works and other projects.”
“I’ll finish things when I get back.”
“You assume a lot.” Choen picked up the small block of wood half-carved into a dragon’s head. “Simplicity is the answer to many things. Do not wait until you think you have every answer before taking action. If you do, your expectant life will pass you by. Experience life as it happens and by the end you will have the answers to the questions that are important to you.”
“You have given me so much,” Tom said in a humble whisper, “yet you ask for nothing in return. I can never repay what you’ve done freely for me.”
Choen gave a small smile. “Wisdom should never be withheld from those who seek it out. To not be aware of your world is lazy and foolish, but on their own, facts are unimportant. You need perception to know which connections have significance and that comes from a wise heart. Knowledge is blind; wisdom is your compass.”
“And you, Choen, are the wisest of them all and have become so without technology. That’s a valuable lesson I’ve failed to heed.”
“Knowledge expands the mind, but without a purpose in life for release, it eventually manifests into contradictions, then confusion and paralysis, and finally into madness—a collapse of the rational mind. It’s all right to not know.”
“I sometimes think that’s happening to me.”
“On your own, you have no true power. Seek out the Light and everything becomes possible. There will come a time in your future when there is no light and all paths have come to an end. When this happens, you will need to look inside.” He tapped Tom above the heart. “It’s in there, but deep—far beneath the lazy inquiry.”
“I’m coming back, though.”
“Preserve the staff I gave you. Memorize the teachings with the touch of your fingers, over and over, until your mind is at peace and the darkness has no hold over you. Do this for me.”
“I promise to do as you ask.”
Choen lifted a pouch from a deep side pocket and shook a Tylinite orb signed with a stylized letter ‘A’ that changed colors in the light as he turned the orb back and forth in his hand.
“We may be simple in our ways, but we are also practical. In this orb are our Archives, including the Teachings of Goral. It would be selfish and unwise to keep this wisdom from you. Remain humble.” He put the orb in the pouch and passed it over.
Tom peered into the pouch then pulled the draw strings tight.
“Do not think yourself superior to those who know less than you do, but never deny or hide from your potential. Always be aware of what your mind is doing, or you will become a leashed slave trapped between expectations about the future and inner fantasies.”
“Without your compassion, I would have fallen into mad despair. He clasped the pouch. “You will always be my greatest source of inspiration.”
Choen tilted forwards and rested his eyes behind a slow blink. All of a sudden, he looked much older.
Tom knelt beside Choen, sensing something wrong. “What is it?”
“My worries are not yours.” Choen raised his hand onto Tom’s shoulder. “Never discard your faith because one day there will be nothing else.”
“I will stay true to the Teachings with all my heart.”
Tom dropped the orb into his robe pocket and went to the table. “In the end, every day becomes precious,” he said, thumbing through a pile of sketches for the pencil-shaded self-portrait. “We want to say things that should have been said long before now and show feelings we kept hidden because we were too embarrassed to be free and frank.” He brushed his sleeve over the corner of his eye as he presented the drawing to Choen. “It’s a little something to remind you of our time together.” He held out a cardboard tube. “There never seems to be enough time to show how much you truly care.”
Choen examined the portrait then rolled it up and slid it into the tube. “I will hang this in our meditation hall.” His old eyes brimmed with love. “Look into the very depths of your mind. When you find the place where there is nothing but Spirit, you will possess the greatest peace and command greatest power.”
Tom hugged Choen. “Thank you—for everything.”
“Remember, simplicity leads to clarity; complexity only to confusion. To be free and truly unbound you must go beyond Mind. You can do it—believe!” Choen drew away, gently. “I will be with you as long as you carry the staff.” He collected his bag and shuffled towards the door without turning back for a final farewell.
The door closed and Choen was gone.
The constraints of biology and Time meant they’d never meet again. He wanted to run after Choen and give him a final hug, but Choen would have said that to cling to that which cannot be held only invites suffering. Better to let go and be free.
He sat down at the portal and composed a short message for Sarra. ‘Will come back and we’ll be together again. Stay strong. We can do this. Forever love, Tom.’ He checked the message and said, “Send.”
“All outside communications have been terminated,” Vera announced. “Twenty minutes to shuttle departure.”
He smashed his fist into the screen and toppled the portal onto the floor. “She could have waited until I’d left. Damn, this stupid… crazy… world.”
He tightened the top buckles on his boots one hole then snapped the prince’s stab-proof vest down straight over the top of his trousers and drew the belt tighter to a firm lock. He tied the scabbard around his waist and slung the shield over his back, leaving the robe undone to hang free.
There was a hurried knock at the door and Ba’illi swept in.
“The shuttle for Abellia is readying to leave.”
Tom drew his sword and slashed the lightSphere stand in two. “Why the change from always wearing green?”
“Old ways,” Ba’illi said, stepping around the smashed lightSphere on the floor and brushing the fluff off his coat with orange gloves. “It was time for a change. Let’s go,” he urged. “Her majesty will not tolerate waiting.”
He didn’t know in what way, but Ba’illi’s new ‘orange flamingo’ look was another clever deceits for the game ahead. He peered around the room at the sky carousels, telescopes, and scientific instruments that had once enthralled him. The room looked almost bare without the dataPod, taken away and uplifted to Abellia straight after his return from Sarra and General Reuzk.
He zipped the carry bag close.
Ba’illi, Teripeli, and Reuzk would say it was vain to think he could make any real difference. Yet history was full of men who believed in their own divine specialness and had overcome their darkest hour to rise up and claim the prize. There would have been no empires had Alexandra the Great, or Genghis Khan stayed at home. The advancements of Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato rang loud and clear through the centuries to the times of the genius of Leonardo da Vinci. What divine beauty had the young Italian artist Michelangelo, two years his senior, bestowed upon the world?
Was saving the world the grand purpose for his own God-given talents, no matter how impossible reason said the odds were? Vanity was for fools, but it would more foolish to think his talents were solely his own doing. Fate had dealt him a cruel hand and he had no choice but to stand alone from the crowd. It was dangerous to believe in that kind of specialness, but true hope was untouched by the vanity of the ego.
He returned to the side table and picked up the half-finished spiceRoll packet. Without hope, there was despair and then it was a short fall into decay until everything was dark. Fulfill his true calling and a lasting peace would surely follow.
>
He crushed the spiceRoll packet into a small crumple and threw it at the waste tube. He would not be the same when he returned from the Space Palace in the way he wasn’t who he’d once been on Earth. Heyre wouldn’t be the same either, but its fate would not be that of Tilas. He slid the sword into the scabbard and took a firm hold on the Staff of Choen.
He stopped beside the gloomy Battle of Argoth wall painting and lifted his sword to match King Lorien riding Kreil the Red towards Emperor Tahulan with the Second Knight of the Realm at his side. He stared into the eyes of King Lorien. What would it have been like to fight in the great battle of 6299? One dreadful day his training and privileged position would demand repayment in full. He stared back out over Nu’hieté towards the distant tower. “I’m coming back, to save you.”
Chapter 36
General Reuzk swiped his hand along the outside of the Tylinite cage. “Do you think this was how it ended?” he said, peering at the giant warrior in the lightPrint holding the Third Knight’s decapitated head above the kneeling King Jialin. He drew back from the cage and accepted the drink.
“Not likely,” President Lauzen said, approaching the cage. “That’s why it’s in there. It’s a copy of the larger lightScreen the queen keeps in the War Room. The warrior is an ambassador. Decay would never risk injury fighting in a battle that’s already won. It may be vain, but it’s meticulously cautious. You don’t live as long as it has by giving into rash impulses of glory. Decay likes to operate out of sight from the depths of the darkness where its prey does not suspect its true intention to dominate all life.”
Reuzk sipped on the glass of water. “You are very familiar with its ways; more so than anybody I know, or anything.”
“I know Decay because I have searched for its weaknesses to the exclusion of everything else.”
“Who are you, truly?”
Lauzen wandered over to his writing desk. “Queen Lillia has asked me to intervene and grant permission for Abellia to leave Heyre’s orbit.” He looked to the pendulum wall clock. “The double-moon slingshot window closes in twenty-five minutes.”
He gazed towards the nearest of the two moons setting in the west. “The queen’s not going anywhere. We found Jbir’s neurals and they link her to Decay. She got rid of Jbir to keep him from spilling the dirt he has on Doctor Teripeli who he brought from Tilas—the one and same doctor who was a long-term guest of Emperor Tilaxian.”
“She’s under the sway of Decay, maybe more given her darkening nature, but deep down she’s on our side. She has every reason to see Decay destroyed forever, as we each have.” Lauzen came to the window, holding a letter in his hand. “I authorized the technology transfer to help persuade Jbir to leave.”
Reuzk straightened and turned to Lauzen. “What the hell is going on? Do I have to fight this war against all of you?”
“General, you are not looking at the big picture. Your concerns with a starMap and conspiracies and deceits—some true, others less so—are misguided. You lack the necessary perspective and fail to grasp the full scale of the war. The Defense of Heyre is part of a larger and far, far more ominous war.” He turned to Reuzk. “It’s doesn’t matter what Jbir fled Heyre with, or why. It’s who he brought back. Thomas Ryder is here to defeat Decay, and I sense perhaps much more.”
“The queen’s at the heart of all our troubles.”
“No! The Négus is the unseen hand. You mistrust her, yet you rescued her personal assistant and keep him inside the Base.”
“He could prove useful at countering her when she comes back.”
“If she comes back. I foresee trouble on the Space Palace. The peace talks are a ruse.”
“Finally, we agree on something,” Reuzk said. “Regardless of what happens on the Space Palace, the Armada will gather midway and proceed with caution to reach Tilas as a unified force in two hundred and fifty years.”
“I must urge caution. Decay stays on Tilas because it has no choice. I have my suspicions about the true reason, but it’s definitely not a show of good faith that it wishes for peace.”
“If there is a larger game in play than us against Decay then what use could Thomas Ryder possibly be? I can’t see a vital need for him to help defend Heyre, even with Rulg’s very high opinion of him as a soldier.”
“He has ‘Potential’ of a potency I have not experienced since the catastrophe of the last days of Colaris.” Lauzen handed the letter to Reuzk.
“Is this supposed to mean something to me?” Reuzk said, studying the letter that stopped abruptly mid-sentence with jagged, violent peaks of ink flattening to a small, rippling line across the page as though an electric shock had spiked the writer’s hand.
“This happened twelve days ago,” Lauzen said, taking the letter back. Queen Lillia experienced the same psychic rupture—soon after she told Thomas Ryder he had to leave Heyre.” Lauzen sipped on his ice water and rolled the glass between his hands. “We are but pawns—necessary, but ultimately expendable. You must put your personal differences with Queen Lillia aside for the good of the greater game. For reasons unclear, Thomas Ryder is the key to our fates, and we must do everything to promote his wellbeing.”
“Who are you?”
“I am an Ambassador, but my Real isn’t holed up in delusional safety on Progeny. On the contrary, I’m on the Torus at the heart of the Armada, the frontline of the war against Decay.”
Reuzk studied Lauzen for any hint of false bravado. “Why should I believe anything you tell me?”
“Your lack of trust limits you. You cannot win this war on your own. You must co-operate; not compete. Those medals pinned to your jacket show you are without peer for the dirty game of close combat, but the war we fight spans thousands of light-years, and probably much more—if space and time have any meaning in that realm.”
Reuzk slammed his glass onto the table. “No more deceits.”
Lauzen took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I am Aramu, the fourth Illumen of Colaris,” he said in an older, quieter voice. “Helio was my protégé and I bear responsibility for his turning away. I defied Decay as long as I could, but that’s cold comfort from where I lie.”
“But if you are one hundred light years away on the Torus then how can you communicate through your Ambassador?”
“Time is of no concern to those with true Potential. As I talk to you now so could Decay talk to its queen. Decay will be only too aware of the Potential of Thomas Ryder and will try to coerce him to its cause.”
“Why did you bring me to Heyre—an outsider, when you had hundreds of Federation soldiers to choose from?”
Lauzen opened his eyes and smiled. “The Négus makes a habit of collecting outsiders.” He waved his hand and the dormant lightMatrix brightened. “This is the dataStream of your rescue from the Drylands.”
Inside the lightMatrix, was a deep-penetration Special Forces unit that he recognized by their uniform as belonging to his old command. “I have no memories of this mission.”
“And Amie has no recall. For good reason, as you will see.”
The captain of the unit stood in front of his soldiers slumped on the ground, worn down by an arduous mission.
“King Jialin sent them to search for you when you never returned.”
Reuzk approached the captain in the lightMatrix. “I should know him… ”
“We’ve found Captain Reuzk, your majesty,” the unit captain said, “but he’s in terrible shape and there’s no sign of the others. By the look of his scars and the severity of his fever we got here just in time. He wouldn’t have lasted another day. He’s ninety miles from our search area. It’s a miracle we even found him.”
“Why did you deviate from the agreed course?” King Jialin asked.
The king’s deep timbre reignited the deep sense of duty he had serving someone truly great. How he had forgotten how natural it was to lay his life down in service.
“We went to cross the Herier River,” the captain said, “but it was in flood fro
m a mountain storm, so we had to divert south until the river split into smaller streams. We headed north again on the other side, but an earthquake blocked our shortcut through the Neria Mountains, forcing us to reroute to the edge of the Drylands, so we ended up here by chance.” The captain glanced back to his soldiers loading Reuzk’s bandaged body onto the stretcher. “We found him propped up against a dead log,” he said, quieter, “surrounded by strange footprints in the sand with a palm frond over his head for shade from the desert sun. He’s had help—of some kind.”
The dataStream focused on the footprints and a thin line from a long tail dragged through the sand.
He backed away from the lightMatrix. “They’re the footprints the Négus left at the Great Swamp.”
“This was where I came in. Two years later, by chance, I was personally visiting King Jialin to discuss establishing an outpost and a few ‘long term’ matters and your name came up. When I saw the tracks, I asked for you to come with us. The king readily agreed, almost as if he’d been expecting my request.”
“Amie doesn’t know any of this?”
“No, there are some things I think it’s best to keep out of her domain. We can’t take the chance that Decay might have somehow infiltrated our technology.”
“Have you ever heard of Karla? The name was on a card I found on a Deceiver, and in the plaza attack Edg’s hat was tagged with ‘K.’ Amie cannot find a single reference point to begin a query.”
“A ‘K’ isn’t anything I know of—must be deep Federation,” Lauzen said in his normal voice. “The inner workings of the cyber realm are beyond my expertise.”
“Then who would know?”
“It was designed ‘in-house’. No outside interference, at least at the core. I doubt even the architects on Progeny that built Amie truly understand how quantum intelligence works at the deepest level.”
“Could this ‘Karla’ be a design flaw?”
“Unlikely, but it could be a security feature that’s so ingrained in the environment that it is, on purpose, beyond corruption.”
