Three hours it took him. Three hours away from the vid, away from the images, puffing and straining as he dragged the sacks outside. Then another hour to clean the kitchen, fill another sack, lift it, cold and moist and carry it outside to lie, tossed casually with the rest. “Clean,” he told the suit, then settled back down in front of the vid unit with the skullcap firmly in place.
He didn’t even think of the boy three days later when they rang at his door. The sound cut through the images and drew him, reluctantly, back to reality. With a sigh, he removed the cap.
He was surprised when he eased the door open a crack and saw the uniforms and the weapons they held in their hands. He was more surprised to see the old woman from his apartment block pointing at him through the door. He frowned, not quite understanding. They pushed past him and into the apartment. One by one they searched the four rooms. After the last, they shrugged, held him against a wall and searched him too. It took them moments to find his knife, sitting hard and sharp in his back pocket. He had forgotten about the knife. It had no “clean” function like his suit.
As the policeman turned the knife slowly in front of his eyes, Krieger found it hard to breathe.
“What’s the meaning of this? That’s mine,” he said to their big blank faces. “I’ve done nothing wrong. This is an invasion of my privacy. What do you want?”
The old woman was nodding with a self-satisfied look as they led him away. He watched her over his shoulder, wondering why she cared. Then his thoughts strayed back to the visual unit. Just for a moment, he strained against their grip on his shoulder as they guided him down to the street.
From then on, it was a blur. The trial was quick, sentencing automatic, and through it all he sat, stony, impassive. The legal intelligence had judged him unfit to account for his actions. He was to be confined and observed … to be studied. It was over so quickly. And then they led him away.
The room was bare, clinical. Metal mesh covered the security glass windows. Cameras scanned all four corners, turning slowly on their bracket supports.
Krieger sat, slightly hunched, staring blankly at the smooth metal table, his jaw firmly set. His fingers gripped the table edge. A stark white gown covered his frame. They’d left him here. No suit—not even a visual unit to fill that aching hollowness inside. A bowl sat in front of him—a neat white bowl. The bowl held two even scoops of ice cream. They were white, round and smooth, vanilla; neither had a cherry.
And already they were melting.
LAST CONTACT
STEWART STERNBERG
“The Gods have left the stars as our playground …”
—The Book of Reawakening
HASTINGS DROPPED TO HIS knees, shoulders rising and falling, tears streaming down gaunt cheeks. Long copper hair hung damp past his shoulders. With clumsy fingers he freed himself from the stiff harness about his chest and shoulders.
“I felt something,” Hastings whispered. It hurt to talk. He wanted to say more, but words failed him.
Morgan grunted and unplugged Hastings’ temple jack. The technician’s round face remained blank. He never looked at Hastings, but then, few people did.
Hastings pressed a towel to his face. He lowered it and stared at the bacteria swimming in his perspiration. Generations of microorganisms rose and fell in his personal ecosystem. With little effort, his focus tightened on one bacterium until he linked with it. The thing existed complacent in that moment.
“I felt something out there,” Hastings repeated. He jabbed a finger toward the stars visible through the ship’s bulkhead. “I felt something.”
Morgan looked from Hastings to the window and turned back to his work. He plucked a data chip from a wall unit and slipped it into a pouch. Without comment, he plodded from the room.
Hastings stared after him, unreal in his solitude.
“What did you feel?” a voice asked. The question sounded read from a script. Of course, Captain Martin would be spying, watching with curiosity as he came back into himself. Hastings faced the camera mounted by the projector and stared blankly.
“Life.”
Martin remained silent, obviously waiting for elaboration, but Hastings didn’t cooperate. He didn’t move. The captain blinked first. “Life?” Martin asked. “We didn’t pick up any transmissions. Nothing. Why do you think that might be?”
Hastings didn’t have an answer. He knew Martin was thinking about The Gurdeep, the ship sent home when their Sensitive, a man named Atkins, went over the edge. Now only The Omnipotent remained out here, and little hope remained.
He’d known Atkins in the center; a jittery man who had difficulty modulating his voice. Hideously brilliant. Somebody said he had telekinetic ability, but then the doctors always hoped for that. They could hope. Word was, when Atkins’ mind went, he tried redefining reality by stealing a rifle and burning away twenty crew members.
People avoided mentioning Atkins to him when discussing The Gurdeep, but Hastings could see the tension in their posture.
“Adrian?”
Hastings jerked his head.
“Any thoughts on why the projector wouldn’t pick up anything?”
“Maybe it wasn’t properly attuned. Maybe what I felt was beyond its reach.”
“Maybe. We’ll see what the backup systems recorded when we review the data.”
What if it nothing showed up? Hastings played back the experience, trying to suppress his growing anxiety. No, he knew he touched something out there, whether or not the machines confirmed it. But, what if it couldn’t be verified? Hastings didn’t realize he’d spoken that thought out loud until Captain Martin responded.
“It it can’t be verified, then we can’t log it, can we?” Martin said.
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t feel it.”
He imagined Captain Martin, the recruitment officer’s dream, standing at his station, beautiful eyes betraying a mixture of pity and loathing for his neurotic Sensitive. How Hastings hated him. The man didn’t belong. This wasn’t the culmination of a life’s work for Martin, it was merely a job.
A memory intruded but Hastings kept it to himself, not just for fear of ridicule but because he didn’t trust his own recollection. Saying he felt the presence of life was one thing, saying he had heard music was an insane confession.
Only he had.
Sending his consciousness into the depths of space, feeling through the void for evidence of life, he’d first sensed an unfamiliar tingling, a sliver of magnificent consciousness, greater than anything, and then the music, the cosmic winds given voice. Sweet. Delightful. Terrible.
“Why don’t you get washed up?” Martin said. “It’s going to be a few hours. While you’re unwinding, we’ll go back over the sensors and see if there were any fluctuations that affected the projector’s readings.”
“You won’t find anything there.”
Hastings instantly regretted the statement.
“Still. Look, Adrian, meet me in the rec area later. Maybe after you get something to eat. We’ll play a round of Lowman.”
The captain’s tone grated on him. “I’d prefer not to.”
“Afraid of competition?” Martin said.
“I’d prefer not to.”
Hastings left the projector chamber before Martin could respond further. He clutched a robe about his thin frame and kept his head down. If only Martin had heard the gentle summons, but he hadn’t and Hastings suspected it wouldn’t show up in the recordings.
If it were left to Martin, The Omnipotent would be on its way home. The captain didn’t experience the siren’s call. He didn’t know what it was like to have his consciousness shot into space, spreading like a hungry net in anticipation of encounter. He didn’t know the death of turning away from that blackness and letting the icy silence continue forever.
Forever.
He needed to talk to the priestess about what he’d heard. Only she could trump the captain.
Hastings let the robe fall in a heap as he entere
d his room. Microscopic life forms moved along his arms, feeding as they went, probing follicles and stirring dead skin.
He expanded his awareness and touched the colonies of microorganisms and gave them comfort. They gave him adoration and worshipful obedience.
He kept his expression neutral and hummed a tune. Martin didn’t matter to the magnificent shadow rumbling through space. He’d never hear the songs that pacified it.
In the shower, water blasted his skin, ending existence for some, but others held on, neither grateful, nor questioning their survival.
They started sending out ships a generation ago, each fully crewed with dedicated people conditioned to appreciate the importance of the task.
Find life.
That was it.
Find life.
The Reawakening sparked a new era which redefined science as a means of fulfilling the word of God. The Calling, the pilgrimage to find God, moved into space seeking the Creator’s other children, whatever form they took.
Aboard each vessel, genetically engineered to be hypersensitive to all life, and conditioned to overcome the slightest xenophobic response, Sensitives were holy vessels. Wired to projectors amplifying their consciousness and monitoring their activities, they swept deep space, stretching outward like a sieve in the hopes of collecting something to fulfill prophecy.
“God is calling. Celebrate Him through contact.” The passage from The Book of Reawakening was inscribed over the entrance of each ship.
From the start, Sensitives were prepared for every possibility, except the heretical one that they would find nothing. That, in fact, they were alone and abandoned in the universe.
One by one the ships surrendered the search and the dictum changed: “God is calling. Celebrate Him.”
Hastings hurried along the corridor and stopped before Mother Amala’s office. As he waited for the chimes approving his entrance, the little ones moved across his body, many gone, but as long as he lived, so would they. His awareness touched them and they stilled, drinking in his presence.
“Sweetness,” the priestess greeted him. She smiled as Hastings gestured in respect to her station. He entered her parlor and settled on a low couch.
“I suspected you’d be coming here after you heard about The Gurdeep,” Amala purred. She was a statuesque woman, with wide hips and muscular legs. Glossy black hair framed a heart shaped face. Her orange robes were worn loosely so it seemed they might fall from her shoulder at any moment.
He shrugged. “Their return doesn’t affect my faith.”
“Would your faith be affected if we were to return?”
He struggled to remain calm. Amala reached out a hand. The tips of her fingers were painted bright red, a practice of her sect. As a fertility priestess, she was expected to bear children continually, from first menses to last, except Amala couldn’t, and since it was against her sect’s beliefs to correct the deficiency, they assigned her to The Omnipotent, where her promiscuity wouldn’t be considered heretical.
“I felt something on the jump,” he said.
“God is calling,” she whispered.
He repeated the phrase, but then added, “It won’t appear in the data.”
Thankfully her expression of calm acceptance didn’t change, but they both knew that without a corroborating projector reading, a Sensitive’s words were useless.
“If you felt something, why wouldn’t it appear in the data stream?”
“It won’t. I know that as well as I know I’ve made contact.”
“They’ll want confirmation.”
“What about faith?” he asked. “I’m a vessel. I live to touch God.”
Hastings wanted her as an ally; he needed her to quell his self-doubt. She stroked his arm and exerted her ability until his arousal became distracting. He almost surrendered to it, but instead nervously directed attention to the bacteria on his skin and listened to their unintelligent voices. Somewhere within his body he detected a virus waking, seeking food, and invading his cells. The cells cried in warning, fearful of the disturbance to their function.
Amala sighed. “What do you want from me?”
“Intercede when the time comes.”
“I can’t interfere.”
“What about our duty?”
“If the captain receives permission for return, who do you think will give him the blessing to do so if not the church? I do not want to return, either, but I have obligations.”
A bark of frustration escaped Hastings’ lips. Amala took his hand and squeezed it, and he fought back tears as the priestess stroked his cheek.
“Do you know what I once did, Sweetness?” she asked. The tone was conspiratorial. Hastings raised his eyebrows. Amala moved closer, slipping an arm around his shoulders and pulling him close. The scent of jasmine tickled. He leaned into her and his face warmed with uncontrollable desire.
“Before we set out, I let someone link me to the projector,” she confessed.
Her words stunned him. The thought of someone outside the discipline using the projector was too shocking.
“You sinned,” he said. That she should do such a thing was too incredible.
Amala blushed.
“I wanted to know what it felt like,” she said.
“Why?”
Amala’s breasts pressed against his arm. She shifted closer. “If I tend to all aboard a ship, shouldn’t I know them intimately? How can you know the ways of a Sensitive without touching what a Sensitive touches?”
“And what did it feel like?” Hastings asked.
He imagined her leaning back into the foam casing and setting the helmet the uninitiated used for testing feedback upon her head.
Amala’s eyes darkened, she stared at a spot above Hastings’ shoulder. A bittersweet expression played upon her features and his heart softened.
“I can’t imagine how you cope,” she said. “I felt as though nothing I knew mattered. Not now. Not ever.”
“It’s the feedback,” Hastings offered. “If you don’t check it, you become too aware of yourself.”
“No, it wasn’t that. It was the reaching out and the emptiness of return.”
How could he explain that the farther one stretched, the thinner one’s consciousness became, until self-awareness became meaningless. It was a danger Sensitives faced each time they jumped.
“Self-awareness can be a nihilistic act,” Hastings said and instantly thought of Sarah.
As the first of the returning Sensitives her suicide had been widely reported. What wasn’t reported was that before killing herself Sarah murdered her family, mutilating their bodies and scribbling one word in blood on the walls of their home.
“Chaos.”
“Maybe self-awareness isn’t the only nihilistic act,” Amala said. She touched him cruelly and his over-stimulated nerve endings screamed for release. He gasped and pushed her away.
“You see? Maybe fulfillment is the ultimate form of nihilism.”
Hastings didn’t sleep. Instead, he sank into himself and merged with the insentient life throughout The Omnipotent. Through them he felt the ship and the sentient organisms who kept it traveling through space.
Drifting, expanding through the metal decks, letting himself be everywhere at once, he recalled the music. Sweet piping called him to the purple midnight and the gold dust stars. And at the center of it all, the power and the promise.
“You have to accept the possibility that what you felt was a projection of yourself,” a dream version of Dr. Gaurav spoke, echoing their earlier conversation.
“It’s what it is,” Martin agreed.
If he took the captain, it would have to be by surprise. The man was powerful and crafty. Maybe a strike to the side of the head. He envisioned the attack as the captain continued talking.
“Amala’s worried about you. We’re all worried. Adrian. You’ve got to stay grounded and know that if the mission changes, then you’ve got to change with it. Nobody’s surrendering or giving up. “
“The machine can only testify to the data it collects,” Hastings said.
“What else is there?”
“If the machine were everything, then why use Sensitives?”
Silence.
Hastings opened his eyes and inhaled calming lotus incense. His minions coursed over him. He sent out love and drew in their response, their little life sparks vibrating with what a sentient might call joy.
Little life. Big life.
He hadn’t told them everything. He hadn’t told Martin or Guarav that while he listened to the music from the center of the universe and touched but a faint echo of the seductive brilliance there, it had sensed him, too. He had for a flickering second transformed into a solitary angel.
“God is calling,” Hastings uttered and he once again heard the music. It came in a mad breathy melody. He bit his lip until blood stained the pillow. Up and down the length of his body the children heard the music, too, and responded in their own orgasmic melody.
The door opened and the technician Morgan stood there, along with Dr. Gaurav. Hastings sat up, eyes wide, skin flushing with anger. Behind them followed Martin.
The captain sat without being asked. He offered a quick smile and looked about the room. His gaze lingered on a picture of Hastings, taken back on Earth with the other Sensitives before beginning their missions. Martin lifted the photo and spent time studying the faces. They were the only family Hastings knew.
“I’ve never traveled with pictures,” Martin said.
Morgan leaned against the door. He shifted weight from one foot to the other, his body tense. Dr. Gaurav’s mouth was drawn into a straight line.
Captain Martin put the photograph back. He cleared his throat and let a moment of silence pass to indicate he was ready to get onto the matter at hand.
“Adrian, I’ve given this tremendous consideration,” he began. The captain brushed the air with his hand. “I’m not going to rehash our earlier argument. Maybe you felt something out there and maybe you didn’t.”
He fell silent and his expression became sympathetic. After a moment, he continued. “What matters is that you believe it. Even if there’s no proof, you believe.”
Dark Horizons Page 20
