by K. W. Jeter
“You have not gone mad. You are not suffering from some delusion.” The figure sitting on the thin pallet put his own hand on one of the loose sleeves of the cassock he wore. “Before you is that man you killed, that one who bore the name Ahpossno. Look.” He drew back the sleeve, exposing the bare skin of his forearm. Along its underside, from the wrist to the elbow, was an elaborate tattoo, etched in deepest black, studded with bright specks of imbedded gold. “You see? The emblem of the Chekkah. That was how you knew what I was before. Can you now have any doubt as to my identity? Or rather, the identity of this body that my spirit still inhabits.”
His hearts clenched at the sight of the tattoo, the insignia showing a high rank in the ruthless military elite that had served the alien slave-masters. A man bearing such a mark had been feared even by the cruel Overseers who had earned their traitors’ privileges by whipping obedience out of their fellow Tenctonese. A mark such as the one inscribed on Ahpossno’s arm had been earned at the cost of others’ lives; in a just universe, that mark would exact the penalty of death for the one who bore it.
Once before, George had executed this man, had brought about his death through his own desperate cunning. To save his own people, to keep the slave-masters from finding them again, bringing their whips and shackles to this bright world. He had no objection to killing the man again.
“How did you . . .” Before that sentence could be passed, he had to know. “How did you come here again? Alive?”
“Why am I not dead?” A grim smile showed on the other’s ravaged face. “Is that what you ask?” He turned his gaze away from George, toward the wavering candle-flame; he raised his hand before it, as though to study the nature of his own resurrected flesh. “I did die; the one whom you knew as Ahpossno, the warrior of the Chekkah, died. He is no more. The one you see before you bears his scars, some of his memories—and none of his soul.” He glanced back around at George. “How could I? Souls, whether they are contained in a Serdsos or not, souls belong to the Tenctonese and to humans . . . and I am neither of those. Not any more.” His voice hushed to little more than a whisper. “The one you see before you has been transformed into another order of being, different from either Tenctonese or the humans who are more of your brethren than you realize.”
He supposed that was true. Once dead, neither Tenctonese nor human rose again. Not in this world.
“I died, and my corpse, sealed in a coffin containing its own vacuum, was jettisoned from the Chekkah mothership.” The candlelight shone dully through Ahpossno’s fingers. “The ship’s officers, my commanders, did so to prevent the contagion with which you had infected me from spreading to the others aboard. Perhaps they succeeded; it is impossible to tell. The mothership returned to those stars from which it came, far from this system. I believe that you at least accomplished what you set out to do; it will be a long time before this world is investigated by the slave-masters again. So my death accomplished a great deal; you have no reason to regret that act, George Francisco.”
“I regret,” he said, “that it was necessary. But there was no other way.”
“You speak the truth. To do that which must be done, even at the peril of one’s own soul . . . that requires a great strength. You could have made a Chekkah warrior.” Ahpossno brought his hand closer to the candle, as though to touch the flame. “But no matter; the enmities that divided us no longer exist. The loyalties that once were mine, the oaths that I had taken in allegiance to our masters—those died at your hands as well.”
“And what replaced them?”
“The Light.” In Ahpossno’s eyes, the candle-flame’s reflection glinted. “The Light that I have brought to you, and to all your brethren, both Tenctonese and human. I found it there, out in the cold and the darkness, out where the Chekkah’s mothership had abandoned my lifeless form. Beyond the limits of these planets’ orbits, where the sun is no more than another faint star. My corpse drifted there, in that endless silence . . . can you believe I remember that? Some cold spark, not alive but not yet dead, must have remained inside my body, perhaps down at the subatomic level, some place that forms the ultimate basis of consciousness. Perhaps in that nonmaterial substance that humans and Tenctonese alike call the soul. That also makes little difference now. In that cold, in that dark, in that silence, the spark that remained, the infinitesimally small thing that was no longer me but was not yet what I was to become—that spark burned and changed, until it was brought back into the realm of the living.”
George listened to the other’s voice in what seemed as great a silence as that of deep space. “But how . . . ?”
“Before the Day of Descent, as our people on this world call it—before the slave-ship crash-landed here—the ship was already in grave danger of breaking into pieces; if it had, everyone on board, you and your family included, would have died out in space. The navigational crew did what they had to in order to leave the bulk of the slave-ship intact enough to survive impact upon this planet’s surface. In deep space, the crew had begun jettisoning as many nonessential sections of the ship as they could. Many of those abandoned sections of the ship are still out there; some have drifted even farther away, toward the stars. One of those sections was an autonomic medical unit; it incorporated our slave-masters’ most highly developed medical technologies. The unit was designed to operate under extreme emergency conditions, when there would be no one capable of directing its actions. It came to life—the life that had been programmed into it by its makers—when its sensors detected my corpse floating in empty space. Through the steel of the chamber in which I had been laid, that small spark was detected; that is how finely honed the sensors were, that the medical unit could detect the last bit of cellular decay. Detect it and seek it out, then reach with its uncoiling arms and bring the dead inside, to light and warmth. That is where I woke, where I found myself, inside that nurturing machinery, in the womb of a non-living thing that had been cast off just as I had been. It was there that the non-living, the machine, brought the dead back to life.”
“No machine can do that . . .” George slowly shook his head in disbelief. “The dead can’t come back.”
“You doubt the evidence of your own eyes.” Ahpossno lifted his hand, palm outward, displaying the Chekkah emblem on his forearm. “Is this not proof? Or this?” The hand turned, fingertips touching his jaw. “You recognized me, didn’t you? You recognized me even when I walked inside your dreaming. Even when you couldn’t see my face, when I was a thing of shadows, you knew who I was. You knew, but you were afraid to say my name, even to whisper it to yourself.”
The other’s words struck George like a blow from his fist. “I—I couldn’t say it. Because you were dead . . .”
“Perhaps I still am—the part of me you can see, at least. Here.” Ahpossno reached out and grabbed George’s hand, the one that wasn’t hidden inside his jacket pocket with the gun, and pressed it against the cassock, over his chest. The rough cloth was all that could be felt; there was no beating of the twin hearts underneath. “You’re right, of course; nothing can bring the dead back to life. The slave-masters’ machines couldn’t do it. But something else happened to me out there, before the autonomic medical unit found me. The change had already happened. Something . . . unknown . . . had entered the seed, transformed it, bathed it in the Light that you have never seen.” He fell silent, folding his hands together. “When I awoke, I knew I was dead . . . and alive. What had been Ahpossno had died, just as you willed it. What lived was a new thing. A creature of Light.”
“And now you’ve brought that Light to us.” George could feel his grip tightening upon the hidden gun. “Whether we want it or not.”
“If you knew—if you really knew—what it is that I’ve brought to this world, you would want it. Because I found something out there, something that changes all we know.”
“Really?” A bitter skepticism tinged George’s voice. “And what would that be?”
“Listen to what I have to say
. When I awoke inside that autonomic medical unit, out in deep space—when I awoke with the new life that had been given me—I searched the unit’s data banks, and I found out why it had been jettisoned from the slave-ship, before it ever came close to Earth. There were Tenctonese aboard the ship, slaves such as yourself, but with a high level of scientific and medical training; they were an elite group, much as the Chekkah are. The research in which they were engaged served the aims of the slave-masters, the genetic manipulation of the Tenctonese people, to make our people into even stronger and more dependable workers. At least, that is what they were supposed to have been doing for their masters; in fact, as I discovered in the records aboard the autonomic medical unit, these Tenctonese slave-scientists had been using the unit’s facilities for clandestine research into the basic genetic structure of Tenctonese physiology—research that had been forbidden, upon pain of death, by their masters. Nevertheless, the scientists had discovered a way of triggering a change in the Tenctonese reproductive processes, a reversion to what the scientists had theorized was the original genetic stock from which our people had been developed thousands of years ago. Just as this discovery had been made, however, the slave-ship’s navigational malfunctions that would result in its crash-landing upon this world had already begun. The slave-scientists, not wanting to risk their discoveries being lost, had taken advantage of the situation and had initiated the jettisoning of the autonomic medical unit containing all the records of their research. It was already too late for the scientists themselves; they had been betrayed to the Overseers for having engaged in the forbidden genetic studies, and had been put to death before the slave-ship landed here. Thus, there was no knowledge among the Newcomers on Earth of what the scientists had discovered about their own genetics and reproductive processes.”
“I find it hard to believe,” said George, “that something so fundamental to our people—something that defines our very nature—could be so completely suppressed.”
“But then, it wasn’t.” Ahpossno gave his gentle half-smile again. “I found it—as perhaps I was meant all along to find it. My destiny and the destiny of the Tenctonese people . . . those have become intertwined, in a way that the slave-masters who first sent me to this world could never have imagined.” His voice softened, became more deeply meditative. “Though I still have cause to wonder . . . there should have been another way that this knowledge was given to our people, even before I came bearing the Light. One woman upon whom the scientists had performed their research remained on board the slave-ship, after the autonomic medical unit had been jettisoned; the scientists had managed to conceal her identity, so the Overseers wouldn’t be able to find her. She should have survived the crash-landing, the Day of Descent; with the change that had been made in her, and the coming together of the two bloods, the Tenctonese and the human . . . then all should have been revealed, even back then. It was destined to be known.”
George gazed at him in puzzlement. “What are you talking about?”
“Is it not obvious? You have seen it happen already with those whom you know and love. It is possible for Tenctonese to mate with humans, to bring forth a child that is a mingling of both our peoples. Your friend, the human Matthew Sikes, and the Tenctonese woman who shares his life—they have such a union. And I have made it possible for them to have a child together.”
“You?” The other’s words stunned George. “But . . . but how?”
“There is much that I can do. Or rather, the being that you once knew as Ahpossno, that one who died but did not die, who was transformed into what you see before you now—to that being, great powers have been given. Powers beyond your knowing.” A cold glint of light appeared in Ahpossno’s eyes. “I knew that I was no longer the same creature as before, that I could do such things as I willed—as had been given to me as my destiny. And I knew as well what had to be done. When I realized the truth, the implications of what I had discovered aboard the autonomic medical unit—that Tenctonese and humans were not two separate bloods, but one originally, and that they could be made one blood again—I saw that I could bring peace to the warring tribes upon this world. If our people and the humans became as one, and they saw that it was, there would be no cause for hatred between them. We would be as brothers, with the same blood running in our veins.”
The words had rolled out in the other’s voice, like the speech of ancient prophets. For a moment, George closed his eyes where he stood, hearing the echo of what had been spoken. One blood . . .
A vision came to him, that he had not seen before in all of his dreaming. A few seconds passed before he recognized it as something that had happened in reality, that he had seen with his eyes open. Rough wood nailed into the shape of a cross, a crude thing wrapped in rags—where had that been? He recalled both himself and his partner Sikes looking at it in disgust; the same twinge of anger moved inside his gut. Now he remembered; it had been propped up on the front lawn of a Newcomer like himself, the Purists had put it there to show how much they hated anyone who wasn’t the same as themselves. They had soaked the rags in blood, making it even uglier and more loathsome, a shining red pool collecting at its base.
Then the vision changed, from memory to something that Ahpossno’s words had called forth. The blood-soaked cross was no longer a hideous and mocking construction, but radiant, transformed into a new splendor. Light streamed from it, as though it were a jewel illumined from within, banishing the darkness that had surrounded it. The blood was no longer that of some slaughtered animal, but a substance that had just been called into creation. Blood that was neither Tenctonese nor human, yet both at the same time. The same blood running in our veins . . .
He pushed Ahpossno’s words out of his thoughts. He had come here with a purpose; nothing was going to make him forget that.
“I owe your friend Matthew my thanks.” Ahpossno spoke again, his voice low and calm. “More than anyone besides yourself, he served to bring about my transformation—though I know that like you, he would have been satisfied with my death alone. His intent is not a matter of consequence; he is a man of honor and courage equal to yours. What better choice could there be then, to help bring the Light into this world? Such was my resolve. I had sufficient training in my previous existence, so that I could override the autonomic medical unit’s programming; there were enough fuel cells remaining in its navigational system that I could direct it here. The journey took time, but the dead have plenty of that. Planetfall was out in the desert, not far from where the slave-ship had come down on the Day of Descent. No one saw me, which is as I wanted it; before I revealed the message that I had brought with me, there was one simple task that I wanted to accomplish. Even before I set foot on the ground, while I was still above the Earth’s roiling clouds, I reached down—not with my hand, but with my soul, with the spark of light that had grown so large within me—I reached down and touched . . . not Matthew, but the woman he loves. Cathy. I had learned from the data banks that the Tenctonese slave-scientists had left aboard the medical unit, what could be done and even how—though they didn’t have the powers that I do. I reached down, I tried, but I was still not close enough; there is a limit to the powers that have been given to me. I had to come closer; I left the medical unit out in the desert—I no longer needed it—and walked. Here, into the city. The souls contained by their two bodies sleeping together guided me to them. I stood beneath their window in the night, and reached up to them; now it was possible. I even entered their dreams, as I did yours. But the touch of my soul went elsewhere inside Cathy. A simple thing, a spark within her body that needed to kindled . . . and thus the change was made. There was now a part of her, deep inside, that was no longer merely Tenctonese; it was human as well. As it had been from the beginning of both our peoples. Her womb was now capable of accepting his seed—that was all that was necessary. Matthew and Cathy already loved each other . . . the rest would follow as a matter of course.” Ahpossno showed his gentle smile again. “As I’m sure y
ou know.”
George studied the figure seated before him, trying to detect the signs of madness. “You’re saying that it was you . . . that you made Cathy’s pregnancy possible. Through some kind of . . . magic.” He pronounced the last word with distaste, his innate rationality rebelling at the thought. “But can you prove it?”
“Proof? I would have thought by now you would have learned that certainty is hard to come by in this universe.” Ahpossno gestured toward the candle on the small table. “You see a flame burning, and you assume it must exist, that your senses do not lie to you. You see a dead man in front of you, a man that walks and speaks as you do, yet without hearts beating inside his chest—you see it, but that is something you have difficulty believing. So then, what proof could I possibly give you?”
“Oh, I believe that you’re alive, all right . . .” George slowly nodded. “I don’t know how it came about, if this story you’ve told me is true or not—but I can see that the man I killed is here again.” He tightened his grip and pulled his hand from his jacket pocket, revealing the gun. “But what can be killed once, can be killed again. If that’s what it takes.” He raised the gun, aiming straight toward the center of Ahpossno’s chest.
The figure seated on the pallet looked up at George. And smiled.
“All right—” Noah turned toward the assault tech. “Let’s hit it.”
The assault tech gave the signal, a quick drop of his arm. Bright sunlight flooded into the garage as the steel door was racked up. The team member operating the controls at the side of the door stepped back as the first unmarked van rolled past. As it cleared the building it slowed enough for the man to scramble into the back, helped up by the others already inside. From where he stood, Noah had a glimpse of their black combat gear, anonymous and ready for violence as the weapons arrayed along the van’s interior.
