by D. Martin
The crystal construction gleamed much closer now. It beckoned us on like a beacon, emitting brilliant, sparkling beams that flared and pulsed momentarily before vanishing, then reappearing to repeat the sequence.
Something inside my head snagged my attention.
I wasn’t certain when I’d grown aware of the probing, foreign touch in my thoughts. It could only have come from that amazing construction—no one else was here. Does Matt feel it too? He must have. His eyes had widened and he looked surprised, like someone who had just recalled a crucial detail. His pace quickened toward the construction, almost fifty feet away.
Whatever it was that had touched our awareness must not have caused him alarm. He strode forth without reservation, as if he was familiar with whatever dwelled within the sparkling edifice looming ahead.
“Matt?” Uncertainty made my voice waver.
“I think we’ve located Timirshil-ka, Kailiri.” He sounded surprised, as if he didn’t dare believe his words.
We marched onward to the large, gleaming mound. My fascinated stare noted the sparkling silver, glittering points that chased around its outline. Then, without warning, an intense cold wave emanated from the crystalline construction, more frigid on my face than the planet’s current air temperature, and it overrode my suit’s internal heat. This must be what deep space would feel like in the vacuum outside the ship. The icy blast forced us to stop and back away. There followed a heightened burst of what I could only describe as the tenuous beginnings of a strong emotion. The disorienting mental disruption besieged my awareness before abruptly ceasing, as did the intensely frigid tide.
I stared at the crystal construction, for the projected disturbance upon my senses had, without a doubt, come from there.
Matt stood motionless, his eyes closed. He sighed and his eyes opened. Green mists filled them. “Come, Kailiri,” he said in a low voice. From the intensity he put in those two words, I sensed his suppressed excitement. He pulled me behind him.
A condensed sublevel of intense thoughts and emotions projected in a subsonic thrum against my awareness. I couldn’t decipher or hear it with my physical ears, but the broadcast’s invisible stream was there, sizzling around my senses.
Before we came within ten paces of the construction, low droning filled the air. It swiftly increased up the scale to an almost inaudible peal that rang on forever. The blue crystal edifice wavered, blurred, and then vanished.
“It’s gone!” I shouted, proclaiming the obvious. Despair echoed in my cry. Disappointment crushed all my budding hopes. Have we failed? Was this our one chance at contacting the being and we didn’t understand it?
Matt turned, scanning the area. “It will return.” He looked confident and unperturbed—unlike me.
I didn’t question his positive assertion. Several tense, silent, cold seconds passed before the unending shattering from a thousand crystal goblets pierced the air and hung persistently there. A blinding gleam snagged our attention. We turned as one to a clear structure sparkling like a jewel-cut diamond that had materialized in a different location behind us. A different construction? Or the same? Was something or someone toying with us?
I backed away, but Matt’s grip tightened on my hand, anchoring me beside him while he remained unmoving. His expression remained calm and certain.
“We have been invited in, Kailiri,” Matt said with wry humor. His dark eyes gleamed and looked eager with anticipation. They’d resumed their usual, arresting appearance with their odd, central flecks. “Shall we go forth?”
It required a strong self-reminder that I’d started this encounter by seeking to redirect the Stardancer’s course toward this planet. I must see it through to the end, for Matt’s sake. When would there be another chance for him? I’d witnessed this world’s effect on him, with its painful memories, and his health was deteriorating. I had to seize our one chance to confront the unknown. I nodded in agreement.
Matt gave me an encouraging smile. “It’s not a bad sort, if my memory about it was correct at the time fourteen years ago.”
Well, that’s most reassuring. My lips curved into a reluctant grin. His self-assured, detached, dry wit was what had first drawn me to My Real Quiet One in the Lilith.
He led me toward the crystal housing. There was no apparent entrance, but he continued forward as if he used a different vision beyond normal reality. Indeed, green mists occluded his eyes again. As we approached, a section in the multifaceted, clear wall wavered like the heat mirages over the Marnu Port’s tarmac. Before I could blink, it vanished.
Matt stepped without hesitation through the opening, leading me along. A deeper silence muffled us than what we’d experienced in the planet’s wilderness. Here, the nonsound hovered as a tangible presence that one almost could touch. I glanced warily around. We stood in a dimly lit chamber of sorts, but it there were no visible details, except that the smooth floor shimmered with its own soft radiance. It appeared formed of durable crystalline material.
I glanced at Matt and wanted to ask him what he was sensing, for he frowned with an inward-turned gaze. He looked as if he was concentrating upon something perplex and taxing. I stayed quiet, fearful of interrupting whatever silent contact he might be having with the being that had helped him long ago.
A soft glow from an undefined source suffused the chamber’s interior. Cool, fresh air filtered gently past my face, taking away the slightly damp and close smell that pervaded the place. The illumination revealed the interior was crystalline also, without solid walls or ceilings anywhere. I could peer all the way through, but not in a direct line, for reflective surfaces skewed and tricked my sight. These interior translucent walls were dark blue, while the exterior had been colorless. But when we’d first viewed this place, the exterior had been blue too. I shook my head in confusion.
Matt and I pushed back the hoods on our environmental suits at almost the same time so we could get a better, unobstructed view of the surroundings. It had also rapidly grown very warm inside here, so we dialed down the heat settings on our suits.
Then I stiffened. Something most definitely touched my thoughts—a strong awareness—and it wasn’t mine. It was different….
Matt whirled around and stared. I copied his movements a bit more slowly. My mouth dropped open at a translucent veil of shimmering, living light slowly descended from above. Its amorphous shape shifted until it assumed a definite sharp-planed outline that mirrored the construction’s exterior.
Matt smiled and stepped back to take my hand. His grasp silently urged me forward across the slick floor toward the hovering presence. The same deep treads on our boots that had helped us navigate the icy terrain outside also kept us upright upon the supersmooth floor.
“Timirshil-ka is asking who you are. It remembers me well, for it has detected portions of its own essence within me. I told it that you’re my third chance at life, while it gave me my second chance.”
I gave him a doubtful stare, bewildered that he could communicate eloquently with the creature without speaking a word aloud. A weight upon my chest lifted. My irrational plan to bring him here might turn out well. In addition to not knowing how we would even find Matt’s otherworldly benefactor, I hadn’t taken in account whether he could still communicate with it. He’d mentioned on Rikin that it had spoken in his mind. A good thing he was a sensitive, although it made me squirm whenever I remembered he could pick up my thoughts too.
“Timirshil-ka wishes to read you, Kailiri. Something about you has intrigued its curiosity. Will you allow it to do so?”
What is Matt saying? What does he mean? My startled stare shot toward the light being, which had become suffused with soft pink color. “I will, if you swear it won’t harm me,” I said with false bravado.
“It will not harm you, doll, but I must warn you that Timirshil-ka’s scans aren’t merely physical, but go down to the minute cellular and biochemical level.” His quiet voice calmed my apprehension only a little. Cellular level? He removed
our supply bag from his shoulder and bent to lower it onto the glowing, glazed floor. Then he straightened and grasped both my arms.
I was about to reply when a warm lassitude overcame me, leaving me weak and witless. Matt drew me close in a protective embrace while the creature’s laser-like awareness sifted through my being with cool detachment. A sensation like I’d been bombarded by a million invisible, microscopic sand particles impinged my skin and tunneled within. Mercy! It’s vibrating through every cell and pore in my body. The foreign awareness withdrew minutes later, leaving me cold and shivering. I stared at Matt for an explanation, but his dark brows had drawn together in a distracted frown. His head jerked and he stared at me with his brows raised high. I interpreted that look as stunned, open surprise.
Muzzy realization surfaced that I’d never seen him look this entirely dumbfounded. In my brief time with him, I’d learned it took much to shake Matt’s calm assurance, so I became anxious too. “What is it?” I whispered.
“Not now, doll,” he whispered back, but he caressed my cheek and laid a quick, warm kiss upon my lips. He turned to the light being, its appearance transmutated into a golden, pulsating glow. “Timirshil-ka is going to reclaim the energy portions donated to me fourteen years ago,” Matt said tonelessly. “That’s the only way to prevent my life force from being consumed and dispersed by the unraveling essence.”
“What will happen to you then?” Sharp alarm spiked through my heart.
“I’ll find this out eventually,” he said, frowning again in concentration. “Timirshil-ka feels that my body’s own forces will rally and regulate itself, but not at first. She said I won’t be well for a while. The essence she gave me cannot be renewed because she’s leaving soon. Her studies are near completion. She arrived here shortly before my ship crashed and has been here since that time.
“She’s concerned that if she donated additional life essence, I would weaken again when it also dissipated. Instead, she thinks that disconnecting and activating certain sections of my genome will increase my own energy production after she retrieves her essence. She’s saying that I’m physically strong enough now to fight the battle for my life that I couldn’t when she first found me years ago.”
My disbelieving stare stayed on Matt. She? Timirshil-ka is a lady? Studies? What had she been studying on this godforsaken, dying planet and star system? I couldn’t fully comprehend what Matt had said about fighting for his life again after so many years. It frightened me. Have I brought him here only to hasten his demise?
“This is her interdimensional travel craft,” Matt said casting a careful gaze around us. His expression reflected awed respect. “We couldn’t enter her craft when it first manifested in its blue vibration aspect. She wasn’t physically present here in that time phase because she was collecting data from a distance on this system’s sun. The second clear manifestation of her craft was when we could enter, for she had shifted back into this time reality phase after she sensed my presence.”
I stared in awed respect also at the patiently hovering, shimmering creature. Its appearance now resembled a transparent column formed from golden glass. “Where did she come from originally?” I wondered aloud.
“She understood your question, Kai. Her answer is that it would be impossible to describe her home’s location in any terms we could understand, except for her to say she comes from the other side of our dreams….”
The being’s golden color shifted to a soft white shimmer, and Matt stepped away.
“She’s preparing to recall the essence portion that she gave me, Kai. Please be patient with me if I’m not the same. I—I’ve relied so long upon the other essence within my body to keep me going that it’s difficult to remember how my body felt when it… when just my own energy filled it.”
A faint white glow emanated from Matt’s body and threaded itself toward the hovering light being. Matt drew a sharp breath and his face twisted in pain, but I didn’t touch him, although every muscle in my body longed to do so.
After a moment, it was over. He crumpled onto the craft’s glowing floor with his eyes clenched shut. I dived to my knees and tried to support him as his features contorted and his body writhed in silent agony.
“Oh, Matt,” I whispered, helpless as to what I should do except hold him. I glanced up in desperation at the being called Timirshil-ka.
No words came to me that would convey my despair and fear for my mate, but she must have detected my turmoil, for gentle reassurance swept over my chaotic thoughts and into my heart. The sensation—like huge, invisible, soft arms enfolding me—comforted and held me cushioned within until I relaxed and released some of my fears.
The warm assurance gradually withdrew from my awareness. By then my worries had calmed. Timirshil-ka had just communicated in the most direct way she could that Matt would recover. Her color transmuted into swirling green, the same green mists that occluded Matt’s eyes at odd times. He stirred in my encircling arms, and my attention darted to him. His eyes were open, alert and trained on me. The green glimmer points were absent. There remained only golden flecks gleaming within his pupils.
He moved to his feet with laborious care, and I hovered nearby poised to catch him in case he folded to the ground again. He stood unsteadily, as if his legs didn’t want to support him. I reached with both hands to grasp his arm. He accepted my support with a smile.
“It’s over, Kailiri,” he said quietly. “All has come full circle.”
I gave him an uncomprehending look, then glanced at Timirshil-ka, who continued displaying her glowing green aspect.
“I’ve returned that which she gave me long ago, and I am leaving this planet of death with a new life before me.” Matt’s intent gaze stayed full upon me. “I will live now to my natural end, and I’ll leave with a wife and a child.”
My stare must have remained blank, because he gave me a wider smile and pulled me into a hard embrace that forced breath from my lungs. “You’re carrying our child, doll… Timirshil-ka detected this when she scanned you.”
No! Not possible. My Fertipressor implants were new—replaced on exact schedule the week before I met Matt. I’d taken advantage of the Alliance-sponsored program on Harnaru, just in case. Either the implant had failed… or…
“Your friend read wrong,” I growled and gave both him and the hovering entity a scathing frown.
Matt laughed. His strange companion’s appearance pulsed with silvery-green light.
“Timirshil-ka admires your spirit, but your skepticism will not erase the new life growing inside you. Your blood scan revealed traces of another separate genome. Our son has been thriving within you for five weeks and has no desire to leave.”
Do I dare challenge something that can somehow merge energy into a Human body to save a person’s life and that can scan bodies and minds? It seemed safer and wiser to say nothing. Then the possibility that the creature might be right floored me. My knees weakened and I clung to Matt.
He smoothed away my hair and touched his lips to my temple with infinite tenderness. “Take good car of our son, my lady,” he whispered.
My throat wouldn’t work and words wouldn’t come. I’d been overwhelmed by more revelations than I could handle for one day, but a hesitant joy had sprung up within me. We will soon be a family: my elusive, passionate mate, me, and our child—our son….
Swiftly upon my exaltation, I remembered the snow-covered grave. Gone now was the envy and resentment that had pursued me since Rikin. Sadness echoed in my thoughts for Matt’s first love and wife. Then I thought of Timirshil-ka and felt overwhelming gratitude to the entity. If not for its compassion, Matt would have died fourteen years ago. And I would have never known him.
Wildly shifting lights drew my attention toward Timirshil-ka. The entity was broadcasting several colors at once before she shifted to a steady, soft violet glow.
“She has read your gratitude, doll. She’s well pleased that she correctly interpreted my desire to live, and that she
helped me so that I could find my heart’s contentment again before my natural end.”
My thoughtful gaze stayed fixed upon the hovering being. “Would you ask her if there’s something we could do for her before we leave?”
“We already have. By returning the life essence portion she gave me, we have enabled her to gain enough energy for the return journey to her home. After she gave that small bit of her essence to me, it weakened her and she became trapped here. She can’t gather as much energy in our reality as she could in her own because of the dying star. If this system had possessed a yellow or white star, there would not have been a problem. The tiny life essence portion she gave me would have simply dissipated my own energies in the end and deteriorated eventually from our reality. But now within Timirshil-ka’s matrix, it will replenish and then renew her energy.
“She, in turn, experiences gratitude, for she required this tiny energy increment to escape the negative effects of this system’s collapsing star. She bids us farewell and a fulfilled life span now, for she will not meet us again.”
His words unleashed an avalanche of questions in my thoughts. There were so many things I wanted to ask! Not scientific inquiries, but questions only artists and writers would have—like why she was there, and how did she perceive Humans and our reality? And what difference had she felt in that small essence portion she’d reclaimed after its fourteen years of infusion within a Human’s body?
Matt gave me a searching stare. “Timirshil-ka has transmitted something like laughter—she’s still laughing—and she wishes me to tell you that in answer to all your wonderings, it was but a single moment crystallized by a long pulsing wave of warm regard for two beings not of her species.” He smiled.
“She likes us?” I glanced in surprise at Timirshil-ka’s now golden form.
“She likes us,” Matt softly confirmed.
