by Paul Anlee
“That’s it?”
“That will be more than enough.”
Timothy stared at her in disbelief. “So, we aren’t going to rescue her?”
“Not directly. We’ll have to settle for giving her everything she needs to rescue herself.”
“Then we’d best hurry.”
Darya nodded and waved her hands.
The code and data around them disappeared and was replaced by flames.
And pain!
Timothy yelped. He’d known it was coming and, still, the pain was excruciating. He could feel his hair and skin burning, his flesh roasting. He looked down at his hands. They were undamaged.
Darya wasn’t immune to the pain, either. She gasped and approached the window on the rocky wall in front of them. Inside was a prison cell that looked like it belonged in the medieval era.
Timothy recognized torture devices he’d seen in the history books at Casa DonTon. Despite the heat, he shuddered to think of the horrifically effective damage they would do to flesh and mind.
They spotted Mary, chained to a table. She looked wild and desperate.
Four Trillians leaned over her. One held a small rusty old blade in front of her face. He was saying something to her, something horrible, no doubt. He traced the knife across her stomach.
Mary screamed, but the sound didn’t penetrate through the window.
Timothy whimpered in sympathy. He was so distracted by the sight of her, he barely felt the flames licking at him anymore.
Darya stretched a hand to the window. Timothy laid his own hand beside hers, silently imploring Mary to look at them.
The gesture caught the attention of the Trillians. Mary was conscious but her eyes were clenched shut.
On seeing Darya and Timothy, the clones stopped what they were doing.
Mary opened her eyes and followed their confused gazes to the window. Her eyes met Darya’s.
“I’m sorry,” Darya mouthed. The flickering light cast dramatic shadows on the pair’s pained faces. “I’m so sorry.”
Two of the Trillians disappeared from the torture cell and rematerialized inside Hell, on each side of Darya and Timothy.
Before the Trillians could grab them, Darya gestured and a dazzling flash blinded everyone. When Mary and the Trillians could see again, Darya and Timothy were gone.
The Trillians shouted angrily and returned to Mary’s cell.
22
Brother Stralasi paced the length of the integration and control center. Every few steps he glanced impatiently at Darak, who was too busy adjusting the soltron detector array to notice him.
Had the Good Brother understood any of it, he might have found the device interesting. As it was, his mind kept wandering back to Eso-La. He wished he were walking among the park-like forests with Crissea instead of stuck here with Darak on this barren rock.
“But if you can’t refine the resolution to better than two light years, what good will that do us?” the Good Brother asked.
If Darak picked up on the monk’s frustration, he ignored it. “That’s two light years across tens of millions of light years. Once we narrow it down to a particular region, I should be able to pinpoint its location to within a few light hours. First, I need to figure out approximately where to look.”
“I thought you didn’t have much of an idea where it was.”
“I don’t, but if it’s been aimed toward the asteroid belt of Eso-La sometime over the last seven million years, it probably came from one of the colonies in the Canes Venatici I cluster. They’re the closest, and Alum would need to use entangled particles from one of their starsteps to move the Eater so far at once. So that’s where I’m starting.
“I’ve been winding the astronomical clock backward to get approximate locations some twenty millions years ago, and forward to determine where Eso-La will be over the next few million years. That gives me a broad cylinder in which to search more thoroughly.”
“Surely you don’t intend for us to shift through all that space looking for this thing?”
“Hmm? No, not at all. Eso-La has ten of these detectors in the array. I can use them in a binary search pattern.”
Stralasi sighed. Dear Alum, give me strength. “Binary search?” he asked.
For once, Darak made no comment on the deficiencies in the monk’s education.
“Binary search. We assemble the array in the halfway point. The Eater is either closer to Eso-La or closer to the Canes Venatici I system.
“Let’s say it’s closer to Eso-La. We move the array halfway between where we are and Eso-La and look again.
“Then we move halfway between where we are at that point, and which region we detect the Eater in. And so on, and so on, until we isolate it to within a few light years.
“Once we narrow down its location, I can move the soltron detectors into a pair of arrays, one on the path and one above it at a right angle. That should narrow it down enough for us to shift directly into its immediate neighborhood.”
“So I’m supposed to accompany you until my dying days as we push these asteroids into place? I’d rather stay here,” Stralasi sulked.
“We don’t need to push them anywhere. I’ll shift them.”
“You can shift a whole planetoid?” Stralasi’s face was struggling between derision and incredulity. He’d seen Darak perform miracles, but moving mountain-sized rocks in space would be a miracle of a truly God-like scale.
The implications troubled him.
“It’ll be near my computational limits,” Darak answered, “but I can handle it. That’s how they got where they are in the first place. Would you like to watch?”
Over the next twenty minutes, with Stralasi watching from inside, Darak moved the asteroids and their internal soltron detectors into position near the middle of the thirty million light year distance between Eso-La and the Canes Venatici I system of galaxies.
Once he was satisfied with the position of the detectors, Darak brought the monk back to his side at the control panel and linked their lattices into the data stream.
“How long before we get an idea?” Stralasi asked.
“Soltron emissions are weak here, so it can’t be terribly close. I won’t try to get more than a general direction at this point; just whether it’s closer to Eso-La or the Canes Venatici cluster. That should only take a few hours. Would you like some lunch?”
“What I’d like is lunch on Eso-La.”
Darak regarded the man more closely. “You and Crissea seem to be getting along well.”
“Yes, she’s lovely, and the rest is none of your business.”
Darak grinned. “Okay, then. Lunch it is.” He chose a corner of the chamber opposite the control panel and expanded a picnic lunch, including a table and chairs, from a pea-sized pellet he pulled from a pocket.
From somewhere Stralasi couldn’t see, Darak piped in soothing ambient music to fill the space left by the absence of conversation.
A soft chime sounded.
“Ah, there we go. Enough data has been collected to give us a rough direction,” Darak said. Without moving from his chair, he accessed the results. “Hmm, that’s interesting. It’s a little farther away than I might’ve thought. Closer to Eso-La.”
He stood, and brushed his hands against his pants. “Time to get back to work,” he said.
Stralasi pushed off his chair reluctantly. “Just like before?” he asked.
“Just like before.”
Over the next two days, Darak moved the asteroids containing the soltron detector array several times. Each time, the array was positioned closer to Eso-La, and the results made him frown.
Darak drew a line through the array positions as they drew closer and closer to the Eater. The vector predicted a path in the ESO 461-36 galaxy that was uncomfortably close to Eso-La’s current position.
“What’s the problem with that?” Stralasi asked when Darak shared the unwelcome information with him.
“It could mean that Alum’s
aim was bad, or he failed to properly account for the movement of Eso-La sun around its galactic core, or….” Darak’s voice trailed off.
“Or what?”
“Or that the Eater is already approaching the ringworld.”
Stralasi thought about death hurtling toward Eso-La and Crissea. He had to do something to save her, save them.
“I’m going to shift the array a light year or so away from Eso-La and a little out of the galactic plane, just to be safe.”
Stralasi didn’t like the sound of that. “Will it get that close? I thought the Canes Venatici I cluster was at least thirty million light years away. If the Eater was launched from that vicinity at near-light speed some seven million years ago, wouldn’t it be farther from Eso-La?”
“My assumptions might be incorrect,” Darak admitted. “If Alum can shift the Eater, maybe he jumped it to a ship that was already not so far away.”
“Was there such a ship, one that could safely contain the Eater?”
“It wouldn’t have to contain the Eater. It would only have to provide a starstep point that it could be shifted to. I’m not aware of any ship sent to the ESO galaxy up to 30 million years ago, but I’ve been away a long time. Alum may have staggered Foundation ships to explore this region. The Local Void we call it. Maybe He found a rogue star in the Void, or moved one there. Who knows? He has multiple agendas, and they’re constantly changing.”
Darak moved the array within a light year from Eso-La. “In any case, we need to confirm. I hope I’m wrong.” The tiny star was still the brightest thing in the poorly lit sky of the dim galaxy.
Stralasi yearned to go there and to take Crissea to somewhere safe. He had bad premonitions about what they were going to find once the array was reactivated.
Darak arranged the detector asteroids in a wide array out of the projected path of the Eater, and stood before the control panel. His tight lips conveyed his worry. He activated the detector array.
Darak and Stralasi barely breathed while they waited for the reflective spheres to pass detection events to the devices spaced around the metal cages.
A strong signal appeared, but it was rapidly receding.
Even with his limited experience, Stralasi was able to interpret the data. “The Eater’s less than a light year from Eso-La, and moving fast.”
Darak nodded. “It’s headed right for them. Impact, if you can call it that, will happen in less than a year.”
He spun away from the control panel and walked toward the detector globe. He stared at his reflection, lost in troubled thoughts.
Stralasi tried to comfort his mentor. “Okay, we’ve found it. It’s a little closer than we’d hoped but, no problem, right?”
Darak mumbled something unintelligible.
Stralasi tried again. “So? What do we do next?”
Darak’s answer was barely audible. “Not much we can do.” His eyes studied the gleaming detector or perhaps his reflection.
“There’s always something you can do,” Stralasi encouraged.
“Eso-La and its billions of inhabitants have less than a year to live. They have nowhere to run, and no way to evacuate everyone.”
“Surely, you could get everyone safely away. You could just pop in and take them somewhere else.”
“Where would they go?” Darak scoffed. “Somewhere in the Realm? Who would welcome them? Alum would jail them, kill them, or wipe their minds.”
“Can’t you find a new planet, one outside the Realm?”
“You and I have visited thousands of planets inhabited by the Realm. You’ve seen the genetic changes, the Standard modifications necessary in order for people to survive.”
“You must know of some place.”
Darak snapped, “What do you know about it? What do you know about anything, for that matter?” He removed himself to a far corner of the observation chamber.
Stralasi gave him a few minutes to calm down, and followed him.
“You can’t simply give up. Not now. The people need you. You have to take them somewhere.”
Darak glowered at the Good Brother. Seeing the resolution tempered with compassion in Stralasi’s face, he softened.
“Sure, I could take them to some other planet. But, you of all people have to understand. To bring Standard Life to a virgin planet in under a year so that it’s habitable by humans, or to modify humans enough to survive on a non-Standard planet, you’ve got to have all the biochemistry exactly right. I wouldn’t have the time to make that many modifications. What you’re asking is impossible.”
Darak covered his face with his hands and rubbed his brow. “I didn’t think I’d ever have to face this again.”
“Again?” Stralasi asked.
Darak’s fingers crested his brow and combed through his hair. He inhaled deeply and released it loudly.
“Earth,” he said. “Origin, that is. When we first discovered the Eater, we had only decades to take the planet from a primitive, squabbling, greedy, narrow-minded, unscientific bunch of incompetents only recently out of the stone age, and turn them into self-sufficient space colonists. Even then, we could only save millions out of the billions of people on the planet.”
He faced the monk. “It’s a terrible thing, to choose who lives and who dies. Less than a few in every thousand was chosen. But even that wasn’t good enough for Alum. He didn’t like our choices, so he made his own. The best of humanity died with Earth, and we were left with…your ancestors.”
Stubbornly, Stralasi pressed on. “We could at least try to save some of them.”
Darak snorted. “Your precious Crissea? Do you think she’d go with you and leave her people to die? You think she loves you that much and them so little?”
Stung by the bitterness in Darak’s tone, Stralasi turned his face away. “You can move them out of the way,” he said.
Darak gaped at him. “Move Eso-La? The sun and the entire ringworld?”
“If not them, you can move the Eater.”
Darak started to object but Stralasi spoke over him. “If Alum can do it, so can you.”
Darak stared at Stralasi, then laughed, and shook his head.
“What did I say that was so funny this time?” Stralasi demanded.
“I knew you’d prove valuable to have along. I didn’t know how or when, but I had a hunch. I never would have predicted something like this, though.”
“Like what?”
“You, my good man, are absolutely right. Alum moved the Eater, but I don’t have the computational capability to generate a shifting field that big.”
“And how does that help?”
“We don’t need to be able to do it ourselves. We just need to steal the capability from him.”
23
“You’re going to steal from Alum?”
“Don’t look so surprised; it was your idea.”
“You’re going to steal. From Alum.”
“Still, yes.” Darak wore an infuriatingly smug look.
“Why not do your normal magic?”
“Science and technology,” Darak corrected, holding up one finger. “Although to someone who doesn’t understand, they do often appear the same.”
Stralasi frowned at the interruption. “You won’t use your science and technology to save these people but you’ll steal from Alum. The Living God,” he added, as if Darak didn’t realize who Alum was.
“First of all, not all technology is equally useful in all circumstances. For instance, I can’t affect the local laws of nature over a large enough space to stop the Eater. Given enough time, I could develop an appropriate technology but we don’t have that luxury.
“Alum has more complex field generators in the Deplosion array than I currently have at my disposal. Time is of the essence. Ergo, we’ll take his.”
“If He allows it,” corrected Stralasi.
“By the time He finds out, they’ll be gone. A few days of adjustments and we’ll be ready to deal with the Eater.”
Stralasi
shook his head in disbelief, threw his hands up, and walked away. I’m bound to a madman—he thought. He considered once again how he might escape from his forced companionship. He felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” Darak said. “Your God will not be able to detect us or follow us. We’re not ready for such a confrontation. I’ll be careful,” he promised. “Anyway, we’ll have a few days before our criminal escapades.”
“What’ll we be doing in the meantime?” Stralasi asked.
“First, I have to go inside,” Darak answered.
“Inside what?”
“The Eater, of course.”
“What? Why?”
Instead of answering, Darak walked to a viewing window. The center of the ESO galaxy was obscured by the all-absorbing gray of the Eater. They followed a few million klicks behind it. The only visible stars were off to the sides and well behind them, where the Eater had not travelled.
He pointed at the indistinct mass directly ahead. “It’s possible my friend is still inside there,” he said. “I have to find out if there’s anything left of him and pull him out if I can. I owe him that.”
Stralasi’s eyes tracked the tip of Darak’s finger to the center of the gray blob. “You told me that everything passing into that thing stays absorbed. Nothing has ever come out of it.”
“True. But before I send it outside this universe and deactivate it, I need to know if Darian’s still alive in there.”
“Who’s Darian?”
“Dr. Darian Leigh. He was my mentor and my friend,” Darak answered. “It’s because of him that I am…me today.”
“He taught you?”
“Taught me? Yes. Even more, he changed me. He started me on the path to becoming a different person. My only regret is that I didn’t understand what happened to him sooner. It took me years to connect his vanishing with the Eater.
“The first time we saw it was right after Darian and Larry disappeared. We were pretty sure the sphere had something to do with their disappearances, but back then we thought the Eater was too small to make them vanish entirely. We expected to find a body, or what was left of a body, but there was nothing.
