"There." Murk dusted off his hands. "Tell me about your readings just now, Hachiro."
Sanu watched the screen of the scanalyzer. "Increased brainwave activity in the vicinity of your hypothalamus." Sanu looked up at Murk with mild surprise. "You sent a telepathic command to the planet's instrumentation."
"Telepathic?" said Horn. "You can read minds, Harvey?"
"Tell me what I'm thinking right now, Murk," said McKee.
"As if I couldn't guess." Murk snorted. "But we're not interested in my brainwaves. Tell me, Mr. Sanu--did you find any usual energy readings?"
"Around us, yes," said Sanu. "The same energy spikes that always happen when the planet's machinery is active."
"But no unusual energy readings from me personally?" said Murk.
Sanu checked the scanalyzer and nodded. "Right."
"What about now?" Murk held out one hand, palm up, and winked at Horn.
An instant later, there was a brown-furred tribble in that hand.
"How's it goin', Matty?" said the tribble, its voice a high-pitched piping. "My name is Triberius."
"Well?" Murk looked expectantly at Sanu.
Sanu frowned and tweaked knobs on the scanalyzer. "No energy surge from the planet," he said.
"Meaning?" said Murk.
"The fabrication machinery didn't activate." Sanu looked up, then back down at his scanalyzer. "But that can't be right."
"What are you getting at, Lieutenant?" said Horn.
"Right before the tribble appeared, there was a surge of unknown energy," said Sanu. "And he was the source."
Sanu waved the scanalyzer at Murk.
"So who made me then?" said the tribble. "The magical planet?"
"Apparently not," said Sanu.
"The Divine Murk?" said the tribble in its high-pitched voice.
"It looks that way." Sanu didn't sound happy.
"Yay!" said Triberius the tribble. "A miracle!"
"Now do you see, Horn?" said Murk. "I truly am a god, and no one can take away my power."
*****
Twenty-Four Years Later...
Earth Year: 2294
Prison Planet Choya
Sark, Chalice, and Deeva backed away as the prison that called itself Burr hoisted its bulk up out of the crater it had occupied.
"What is this thing?" said Deeva. "Robotic A.I.? Genetically engineered?"
"Native species," said Sark. "How long, Meredith?"
"Less than three minutes," said Chalice.
"Till what?" said Deeva.
"Till the agent I injected him with takes effect," said Chalice.
"What if it doesn't?" said Deeva.
Chalice did not answer, and neither did Sark. It would serve no purpose, he knew, to say it aloud at this time.
If it does not work, Burr will most likely kill us all.
"Three minutes is a long time," said Deeva.
"Two minutes now," said Chalice. "Maybe less if we're lucky."
Deeva never took her eyes off the huge shape rising from the crater. "What'll we do while we wait?"
"Negotiate," said Sark.
"That's the best you can come up with?" Deeva snorted. "I'm starting to wonder what my great-grandfather saw in you, Mr. Sark."
Suddenly, Burr's thunderous voice resonated around the interior of the shield bubble. "SARK? I REMEMBER SARK."
Even as Sark stepped forward, he gently pressed Chalice and Deeva back to either side of him. "Hello, Burr," he said. "I've come to retrieve the prisoner."
Burr's yellow eye with its fire-red iris slowly closed and then opened. "I HAVE ORDERS NEVER TO RELEASE HIM."
"I know," said Sark. "I gave you those orders, Burr."
Burr shifted its bulk and winched a massive, maroon leg onto the rim of the crater. "THEN YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW MUCH FORCE IS AUTHORIZED."
"Yes," said Sark. "Lethal force."
"IRONIC." Burr cranked out another giant leg. With a sound like huge trees splitting and splintering, the living prison hauled itself free of the crater. "YOU GAVE THE ORDERS."
"That is true." Sark turned to Chalice and raised an eyebrow.
Chalice checked the readout on her scanalyzer and shook her head. "It's been five minutes," she said.
Sark nodded and turned back to the prison. "Burr," he said. "I am issuing a new order. Logically, you must..."
Before Sark could finish, Deeva tackled him to the ground. A burst of intense heat leaped out of thin air and sizzled past overhead.
"Lookalive oldtimer." Deeva's quickfire words ran together.
Sark had been taken by surprise by the attack out of nowhere. Apparently, Burr was using micro-wormholes to project weapons fire. If not for Deeva, the first shot would have incinerated Sark.
She does have something in common with Matt Horn. She saved my life.
"Time for action," said Sark.
"No kidding," said Deeva as she pushed herself off him.
Sark grabbed her arm before she could get away. "The prison taps the power of the prisoner...and the prisoner's power is substantial."
"Is there a weak spot?" Deeva's head flicked from side to side as she watched for Burr's next strike.
"Not unless the agent Doctor Chalice injected it with disrupts the power flow," said Sark.
Deeva puffed out her breath and grinned. "I swear," she said. "I don't know what you would have done without me today." Then, she ruffled Sark's bangs and disappeared, shifting back to her hyperaccelerated phase.
Sark smoothed his bangs as he got to his feet. Just then, Chalice sprinted past, brandishing the hypospray.
He could not fault her logic. Perhaps the first dose was not enough.
The best thing Sark could do was distract Burr while Chalice got close. To that end, he ran in the opposite direction from Chalice, toward the front of the living prison.
Alerted by a telltale rippling in the air up ahead, Sark leaped to one side. A bolt of white energy poured from the heart of the ripples and blasted the very spot where Sark had stood an instant ago.
Sark swung around his emanator rifle and fired at Burr's giant red-and-yellow eye. The shot just splashed off the eye's surface; Burr did not even blink.
"IT HAS BEEN A LONG TWENTY-FOUR YEARS," said Burr. "THANK YOU FOR RELIEVING MY BOREDOM...BARELY."
"You are welcome," said Sark, firing again into Burr's eye. The air rippled in two places nearby, and Sark dove between them, barely dodging two fresh bolts of energy.
Suddenly, the air directly in front of him opened wide. Instead of ejecting a surge of deadly energy, however, the wormhole sucked in Sark.
It spit him out in two pieces.
Sark was split lengthwise down the midline of his body, from head to toe. His two halves floated at opposite sides of the shield bubble, internal organs wide open and fixed in place by an unseen force.
But the division was deeper even than that. One half pulsed with green blood. The ear on that half was pointed.
The ear on the other half was not pointed. The visible blood and organs on that half were red, not green.
Sark had been split into a Hephaestan half and a human half. The two sides were dramatically, fundamentally different.
And yet they had one thing in common.
Both halves were screaming in agony.
*****
Chapter 5
Earth Year: 2294
Prison Planet Choya
I have a flower in my mind.
It is The Last Safe Place. It is where I go when all else fails. When the pain is too great.
Like now.
Sark opened his eyes...one Hephaestan, one human. The living prison, Burr, had split him in two, from head to toe.
Some kind of dimensional shift. Impossibly precise surgery separating those pieces, and yet I can still think and
Sark screamed. Howled and howled in unadulterated agony.
Burr did this by tapping the power of the prisoner locked within him...the godlike being known as
More screaming. Flashes of blinding white.
Flickers of clarity: Curiously, the half that hurts the most is the
Plummeting. Enough pain to blot out everything.
Time to hide. Go to The Last Safe Place.
The flower opens.
I remember...
Six months ago, Sark heard a dead man's voice in the middle of a war.
He heard the voice after he made up his mind to resign from Astrofleet. After he watched, on the bridge of the Star cruiser Churchill, as the Ursan and Quetzan battle fleets tore each other to pieces.
I could have prevented this. That was what he thought as thousands of lives burned away in the cold vacuum of space between neighboring worlds.
If not for my orders, I could have talked them out of this. Instead, he had been sent, as captain of the Churchill, only to evacuate Interplanetary Alliance citizens and observe the conflict.
An officer with inferior diplomatic skills had been assigned to negotiate and had failed to bridge the gap between the bearlike Ursans and reptilian Quetza. Sark had been left to watch the destruction and feel the death cries of all the doomed thousands of minds.
There are some problems I cannot fix as part of Astrofleet. That was when Sark had decided to become a diplomat.
An ambassador at large. Free from Astrofleet's chain of command. Free to encourage change as he saw fit.
Matt Horn would approve.
Just as that thought crossed Sark's mind, he heard the voice. Sensed the familiar presence.
Sark?
An echo. It had to have been. A memory of his friend, who had been dead for nearly a year.
But there it was again, and stronger.
Sark?
Then, the Australian Aborigine helmsman, Mumuga, spoke. "Captain! A band of intense energy is headed this way at Grav 3."
"On screen," said Sark. The instant the image of the crackling ribbon of light appeared on the viewscreen, he recognized it.
And the voice in his mind grew stronger still.
Sark?
"It has the same characteristics as the wave that damaged Infinitude-B last year, sir," said Mumuga.
Sark was already a step ahead of him. It is the same wave.
And it is more than a wave. It is more than anyone imagined.
If I had been aboard the Infinitude-B when it struck, I would have recognized it. I would have sensed the connection.
The link to one of the most dangerous enemies we ever faced during the first seven-year mission.
Mumuga turned and looked at him. "Evasive maneuvers, sir?"
Sark!
"Evasive maneuvers, Lieutenant. And alert the Quetzan and Ursan warships." Sark's voice seemed to come from someone else. His mind was focused on one thought alone.
Matt!
Matt is alive!
Sark grabbed hold of it like a drowning man clutching a life preserver.
Was it the biggest regret of his life? Not attending the maiden voyage of the Infinitude-B? Not saving Matt Horn?
And now, maybe, he had a second chance. Maybe he could do for Matt what Matt had done for him so long ago.
Bring him back from the dead.
It was at that moment that a plan started to form in Sark's mind. A plan that would take him to the savage planet Choya and the living prison, Burr. To the one being most closely linked to that ribbon of energy.
A plan that now, he realized, as he hung suspended and split in half, was doomed to...
The flower closes.
"Sark? Sark, can you hear me?"
Meredith's voice. Calling him away from the flower. Back from The Last Safe Place.
Is she dead, too? Are we both dead?
"Sark, wake up."
No, not dead. I have been dead before, and this is not the same.
Sark's eyes fluttered open. For an instant, his vision was split--one side cast in red, the other cast in green.
Then, both sides melted together, and the monochromatic tints merged into familiar full colors. Chalice's hair was neither crimson nor emerald, but brown. Her face, as she gazed down at him, was neither scarlet nor chartreuse.
As soon as consciousness fully returned, Sark touched both sides of his body, right and left. He found that they had been reconnected.
Next, his fingers flew to his ears. The tips of both ears were pointed.
Not only had the two sides of his body been put back together, but his human and Hephaestan halves had been reintegrated.
If only the pain had gone away in the bargain. It came in waves, not nearly so strong as when he'd been cut in half but a taste of the same stabbing agony.
Chalice injected him with something from the hypospray. Then, the businesslike mask fell away from her features.
Her expression became one of great relief and affection. "Good to have you back in one piece," she said, blinking away a tear.
Sark sat up quickly and looked around. He could see no trace of Burr.
"Where...?" said Sark.
"I think Burr may have accelerated his vibrational frequency," said Chalice. "Like Deeva."
Sark got to his feet. "He has gone after her."
"He could be weakening," said Chalice. "You snapped back together right after he disappeared."
"The neural agent." Sark nodded. "You administered a second dose."
"I hope it was enough." Chalice scanned the vicinity with her scanalyzer. "The prisoner has a lot of power for Burr to tap."
The air in the middle of the shield bubble rippled and buckled. Sark instantly unholstered an emanator pistol and trained it on the spot.
"We must harness that power," he said. "We must convince him to use it to save Matt Horn instead of trying to destroy the Interplanetary Alliance again.
"We must find a way to reason with the mad god, Shamballah."
*****
Twenty-Four Years Earlier...
Earth Year 2270
Fantasy World
"Meet my chief disciple," said Harvey Murk. "His name is Shamballah."
Horn looked up at the black-robed alien towering over him. Shamballah, who had just strode into Murk's cathedral like he owned the place, was at least seven meters tall.
"Shamballah is my most devoted follower," said Murk. He only managed to throw an arm around Shamballah's shoulders because he was still floating a meter off the ground.
Though Shamballah was humanoid, he was not a member of any race that Horn had ever read about or encountered. He had four arms--two in shoulder sockets and two mounted frontally in the middle of his abdomen. Each of his four hands had five fingers and two thumbs--one on each side. He also had a long tail, upraised now and flicking back and forth behind his head.
Shamballah's velvety fur was striped coal black over snow white like the coat of a Siberian tiger. His eyes glowed metallic red with no pupils, and his lips and fingernails were deep violet.
"It is my greatest joy to exalt the Divine Murk." Shamballah folded his four hands together in an intricate mesh of fingers. He sounded as if he were speaking with three voices at once--one a deep bass, the other a tenor, the third a soprano.
Horn smiled tightly. His instincts, which were almost never wrong, were screaming red alerts at him.
This one is dangerous.
Unlike Murk's obsequious flock, who were all unremarkable and indistinguishable from one another, Shamballah made an impression. A strong impression.
"All is in readiness for the Feast of All Murks," Shamballah said in his tripartite voice.
"Splendid." Murk grinned and held up Triberius, the tribble he'd conjured from thin air just moments ago. "We have a new miracle to celebrate."
Triberius' voice was high-pitched as the notes of a flute. He flexed and twitched in the palm of Murk's hand as he spoke. "Our Lord Murk made me to prove his divinity to the infidels."
"So you are believers now." Shamballah spread all four arms wide. "Welcome to the Church of Murk."
Murk hovered between Nabokov and Zahara.
"These two will be the first to marry in the Church. I'll perform the ceremony as part of the Feast of All Murks."
"What an honor," said Shamballah. "Congratulations to you both."
"I have a few more miracles in mind for the wedding." Murk winked at Nabokov.
"And the honeymoon," chirped Triberius, and then he giggled.
Shamballah bowed. "I pray that I may have the privilege of witnessing your magnificent works at this 'honeymoon,' Master."
Horn and McKee shared a look.
"It was only a matter of time, Matt." McKee shook his head. "All those mind-control spores and teleporter accidents and body-snatchings and psychoactive gases were bound to take their toll on us eventually. We've finally lost it."
Horn smiled. "Who said you can't tell when you're going space-happy?"
"I just wish Sark were here," said McKee. "I'd love to see his reaction to all this."
Just then, Shamballah planted a hand atop Sanu's head. "You must join me, then, as disciples of the Divine Murk. Our glorious crusade in the name of the Almighty shall become the stuff of epic songs and deathless legends."
"Crusade?" said Nabokov.
Shamballah's striped tail switched assertively. "To spread the gospel of Murk throughout the stars, of course."
Horn flashed a look at Murk and caught him frowning.
What's going on here?
"This planet makes your power possible," said Horn. "You know you can't take it with you when you leave, Harvey."
"Who said anything about leaving?" said Shamballah.
At that moment, Horn's communilink started beeping, signaling an incoming call.
*****
Sark sat in the command chair on the bridge of the U.S.S. Infinitude and gazed at the viewscreen.
How logical.
Other members of the bridge crew gasped and spoke in stunned voices...but not Sark. He simply nodded in cool appreciation of the logical underpinnings of what he saw on the screen.
If the planet's instrumentality can manufacture any number of artificial constructs, why not this?
Of course, this poses a secondary question.
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