by Peter David
“I didn’t,” said Sandy. “Missy did.”
“No, Missy did not!”
“Well, you can’t hear her, Dad,” Sandy said, sounding remarkably reasonable given the circumstances. “So how would you know?”
Now George was on his feet, bristling with full parental indignation. “Stop talking back to me, young man!”
Sandy had never looked more perplexed in his life. “So . . . so I can’t talk to you or Missy? Can I talk to Mom still?” Suddenly he looked again to empty air and there was genuine worry on his face. “Missy, I can’t say that to him!”
“What? What can’t you say?”
“Nothing, Dad . . .”
“What can’t you say?”
Sandy had slid off the bed, and he was backing up, never taking his eyes off his father. “I . . . I better not tell you . . . I mean, you got mad when Missy called you a . . . you know . . . and this is much worse . . .”
“You can’t keep hiding behind your imaginary friend, Sandy.” George felt as if he was being overwhelmed, even suffocated by the anger he was feeling. He suddenly felt as if he was much taller, the boy much shorter. “Talk to me.”
Sandy’s hands were moving in vague patterns in the air, as if he was trying to snag dust motes between his fingertips. “You said I shouldn’t talk back . . . if . . .”
“Talk to me!”
His father had spoken with such abruptness and force that Sandy jumped slightly. He had kept backing up, and his back bumped up against a shelf of toys. He grabbed one, a rabbit, and held it in front of him, his small arms curled around it as if it afforded him protection. The words spilled out of him. “She . . . she said you were dumb, and didn’t know anything, and that you were jealous of her. And that if you did anything, or tried to make her go away, then she would do bad things to you. Really bad things.”
George was trying to keep his calm, but he felt it slipping away. “Now you’re threatening me? Is that it, Sandy?”
“No, Dad—!”
In two quick paces, George was in front of his son, gripping Sandy by either shoulder. Although he wasn’t hurting the child, he was nevertheless scaring the hell out of him. “Now you listen to me!” he bellowed. “It’s enough! Do you hear me? Enough! You’re a big boy, and you’re too old to play with imaginary friends! Do you understand?”
“She’s not imaginary!” wailed Sandy. “She’s not! Don’t make her angry, Daddy! Please! It’ll be bad!”
George shook him again harder, as if the very notion of an invisible playmate could be sent tumbling right out of him if he was just agitated with sufficient force. “There is no Missy!” he shouted. “There is no invisible friend! There is no—!”
That was when the hair on the back of George’s head began to stand on end. But it wasn’t from fear or some sense of foreboding. Instead there was some kind of buildup of energy, like static electricity, except . . . worse.
His mind tried to justify a reason for it, and he thought that maybe he’d been rubbing his feet on the carpet too quickly, or something equally ludicrous. But the power was building up, stronger, more intense with each passing moment. Sandy was sobbing wildly, and he looked terrified as he kept crying out repeatedly, “I warned you! I warned you, Daddy!”
The power was coming from all over the room. George saw blue-white energy crackling along the toys, knocking them off the shelves, like plush-filled cannonballs. The threads of the shag carpet were standing straight up and down. Over on the desk, the computer station was trembling, first a little, and then a lot. The screen pitched backward off the desk, crashing to the floor. The racket prompted Sheila to shout from downstairs, “What the hell is going on up there?!”
“Stay away! Stay down there!” bellowed George. He had backed away from Sandy, and now he spun on his heel and bolted for the door. It slammed shut in his face. He’d been moving so fast that he crashed into it, rebounding and staggering from the impact.
“Missy! Stop it! Don’t hurt him! He’s my daddy!” Sandy begged, but his pleas did no good. The power buildup continued. George let out a scream of unbridled terror, and then energy blasts erupted all around him. He jumped to the right, to the left, barely staying out of the way . . . or was it that whatever-it-was was playing with him, toying with him? He ducked and a blast tore through the air just over his head. He hit the ground, smelled something burning, thought it was he himself and then realized it was the carpet. There were no flames, but it was smoldering, and the air was thick with the smell of ozone. Over the cacophony of unleashed power all around him, he heard Sandy’s voice crying out, begging Missy to stop what she was doing. Toys were flying everywhere, as if being knocked aside by an invisible baseball bat.
The computer screen shattered, fragments scattering through the air like a grenade. George, lying flat on the floor, buried his head beneath his arms and cried out for it to stop, to stop already, just stop . . .
“Daddy!” screamed Sandy, and suddenly George snapped out of his paralysis. He was on his hands and knees, scrambling for the door again, cutting himself on broken shards of the computer and not caring. His knee crushed the stomach of a teddy bear, which let out a squeak of protest. This time, when he got to the door, it opened. He didn’t question his luck, and when Sandy cried out for him again and again, he didn’t so much as cast a glance back over his shoulder. He started for the door, and suddenly he was lifted into the air, propelled, as if a giant hand had picked him up and tossed him across the rest of the room, his weight meaning nothing.
George tumbled through the door, hit the outside corridor still rolling, and came incredibly close to rolling headfirst down the stairs. He snagged the banister at the last moment, preventing a painful and even a possibly fatal fall, had he fallen in such a way that his neck had been snapped. As it was, he managed to right himself at the last moment, but just barely.
He sucked air into his lungs. They were burning, the smell of ozone still seared into them, and then as if abruptly realizing where he was—galvanized by the chaos being unleashed in his son’s room—he scrambled to his feet and tore down the stairs.
A terrified Sheila was waiting at the bottom of the stairs for him, crying out to him, demanding to know what was going on. He didn’t bother to tell her. He couldn’t find the words, couldn’t push past the terror that was pounding through him. Instead he sprinted for the front door, and then he was out, out into the open air. There were a few puddles left over from the previous night’s rain, and he splashed through them, running as fast as he could.
It was only later, when he had a chance to catch his breath and assess the panic that had seized him, that he would realize that he had left his son behind. That a braver man, a better father, would have picked the child up bodily and carried him out of the room, away from that . . . that thing. That creature that apparently inhabited the room and had tried its level best to kill him. But even as the thought occurred to him, he dismissed it. Whatever the thing was that had unleashed its wrath upon him, there was no reason to assume that it was going to stay localized in Sandy’s room. He might very well have picked up the child and carted him out, only to have the whatever-it-was follow along right behind him.
His fleeing was an act of cowardice. He knew that beyond question as well. He should have remained, should have done something . . . but he had given in to utter terror, and he could think of absolutely no way that he could face his wife and child again. Of course, it might have been a harder decision for him to make had he actually wanted to face them again.
But he didn’t.
It might very well have been that Missy had done him a favor. She had, in the final analysis, given him a concrete reason to do what he’d always considered doing, but never had the nerve to accomplish. He felt free and alive, and he would have Missy to thank, were he actually capable of dwelling upon what had happened without breaking out into cold sweats.
He hopped a freighter off Earth that night. It never occurred to Sheila, until too late,
that he might pursue that route, because he’d always had a phobia about space travel. He’d never trusted that the relatively fragile hull of a ship could withstand the rigors of space travel, and had been more than content in his being utterly and blissfully Earthbound. By the time she did try to track him, he had effectively disappeared, leaving Sheila with Sandy . . . and her.
Sheila, not knowing that she was seeing her husband for the last time as he dashed out the door, looked up the stairs to the source of the commotion. Her maternal instinct kicked in and she called “Sandy?” with considerable worry.
There was no answer. The only response she got was the sounds of crackling energy subsiding. Slowly, apprehensively, she made her way up the stairs. She had only the vaguest of notions as to what had just happened, but she knew one thing beyond question: She was terrified of what might happen next. She got to the top of the stairs, peered in through the door.
Sandy was seated in the middle of the floor of his room. Toys were scattered all over, and he was bleeding from some minor cuts on his forehead, caused by shards from the computer that had exploded. His hair was standing on end as if he’d been hit with a lightning bolt, and his eyebrows were now a lighter shade of red than they’d been before. There was a dazed look in his eyes, and as was his custom, his knees were drawn to his chin. He was rocking himself gently, and it took him some moments to focus on his mother calling to him. When he did, he seemed to be staring at her from another quadrant of space, as if he was looking right through her even as he focused on her.
“Missy shouldn’t have done that,” said Sandy. “She shouldn’t have done that. And now everybody’s going to be mad at me.”
Sheila stood there, transfixed, her body trembling as if someone had run a spear through her chest. She licked her dried lips, tried to say something. Nothing emerged. Sandy looked up at her, seeming to notice her for the first time, and asked, “Are you mad at me, Mommy?”
She tried to respond. Nothing came out.
With a hint of admonition, he said, “Missy wants to know.”
“No,” Sheila said instantly. She gripped the doorframe, steadying herself. “No. I’m not mad. At you. At all. Not at all.”
Sandy let out a breath of relief. “That’s good. I love you, Mommy. And Missy loves you.”
“I love you both, too,” said Sheila, which was what she had to say. Everything else she needed to say could wait for later. For when Sandy was grown . . . and Missy was gone . . .
. . . if she ever would be, that was.
And as she stared into her son’s pleasant, soulful face, she couldn’t help but feel that, more than ever, she had looked upon the face of her future.
It terrified her.
NOW . . .
EXCALIBUR
i.
BURGOYNE 172, seated in hir command chair on the bridge, watched the Trident with fascination as the other starship floated within range of the Excalibur. Even though s/he had nothing to do with that ship, Burgoyne still felt a measure of pride whenever s/he was nearby another starship. S/he decided that perhaps it was because it was the way hir own people, the Hermats, had made hir feel unaccepted, even excluded, from the rest of hir race simply because s/he wasn’t as stodgy as the rest of— “Is he here?”
The unexpected interruption jolted Burgoyne from hir reverie, and s/he turned to see that hir mate—in life if not in any sort of formalized ceremony—Dr. Selar, was standing just behind hir. Selar’s face was as impassive as always, and yet Burgoyne couldn’t help but feel that there was a slightly unusual sense of urgency to hir tone. Burgoyne couldn’t help but marvel over the fact that it seemed as if Selar had literally materialized on the bridge. S/he hadn’t even noticed the hiss of the turbolift doors. Perhaps Selar had come up the emergency access ladder. But . . . why would she take the time to do that?
“He? You mean the captain?” asked Burgoyne. “He’s in conference with Captain Shelby at the mo—”
“No. Not the captain. Him.”
“Him?”
“Him,” said Selar with greater urgency. Her gaze was darting around at the others on the bridge, who were starting to turn and look at her with open curiosity.
“Him whom? Whom is—?” And then, suddenly, Burgoyne got it. “Oh! Him!”
“Yes,” said Selar, with obvious relief, and a touch of equally obvious annoyance that it had taken so long for Burgoyne to comprehend what was being discussed . . . or not being discussed, as the case may be. “Have you seen him? I thought he might have come up here.”
“No. No, he hasn’t. How long has he—?”
“Dreyfuss is not certain.” Dreyfuss was the individual who ran the children’s recreation center on the Excalibur.
Burgoyne shook hir head, drumming hir fingers for a moment on the armrest of hir chair. “Do you want me to—?”
“No,” Selar said immediately.
“But I didn’t tell you what I was going to do.”
“Since I do not wish you to do anything about it, the response of ‘no’ is relatively all-purpose,” Selar replied. “I will attend to it.”
“If you’re sure . . .”
“I,” said Selar, “am always sure.” With that, she turned on her heel, squared her shoulders, and strode toward the turbolift. At the last moment, however, she seemed to think better of it and instead clambered down the auxiliary exit ladder. That was, Burgoyne realized, indeed the way she’d come up to the bridge in the first place. Furthermore, he understood why: It was because the object of her search enjoyed climbing, and the auxiliary ladders of the Excalibur provided a much more likely arena in which to find him than the turbolift.
She’d said she wanted to handle it. Nevertheless, Burgoyne certainly had a stake in the matter as well, and s/he decided that s/he wasn’t going to allow hirself to be dismissed from consideration in such an offhand fashion. After a moment’s thought more, s/he said, “Mr. Kebron.”
Zak Kebron, the immense, rock-hard Brikar who was the ship’s chief of security, rose from his position at tactical. He moved toward Burgoyne; it never seemed as if Kebron was walking so much as that he was a sentient avalanche, moving with one singular purpose. When Zak Kebron was going at high speed, there was no place one wanted to be less than directly in his path. He stopped a couple of feet away from Burgoyne and waited.
“Lieutenant,” said Burgoyne, and waggled one finger to indicate that Kebron should lean over so s/he could speak in a softer, more confidential tone. Kebron, typically, remained standing exactly where he was, without so much as the slightest bend at the waist. He was going to do nothing to make this easier on Burgoyne. Burgoyne sighed in annoyance. Very well. Be that way, s/he thought. “Lieutenant,” Burgoyne started again, “we . . . which is to say, I . . . have a slight problem.”
Kebron said nothing. He simply stood there, waiting, displaying the scintillating emotional range of a statue.
“The problem,” said Burgoyne, “is with . . . him.”
“Your son.”
Burgoyne blinked in surprise. “How did you know?”
Kebron might have shrugged, although if he did, he did so inwardly. “Who else?”
There were many answers that Burgoyne could have given to that, but realized that there probably wouldn’t be much point to it. Instead s/he rose from hir chair so that s/he was facing Kebron, although s/he was still at least a head shorter. “It appears he’s out and about on the ship. His mother’s looking for him. Could you ask your security people to keep an eye out for him? Track him down, perhaps?”
“It’s not a security matter.”
“All right, but . . . if you did it . . . you’d be doing me a personal favor.”
“Why do that?”
Burgoyne felt a faint pounding in the back of hir head, and couldn’t help but wonder if this was how Elizabeth Shelby had felt from time to time, back when she held the position of first officer. “You realize that I could, of course, order you to do it.”
“Yes.”
&
nbsp; Kebron waited, and finally Burgoyne threw hir arms up in aggravation. “Forget it. I’ll attend to it myself. Don’t worry about a—”
“My people are already on it.”
Burgoyne stared at Kebron uncomprehendingly. “Wh-what?”
Gesturing slightly with his shoulder in the direction that Selar had gone—since indicating things with a nod of his head was not really possible for him—Kebron said, “I overheard Selar. By the time she’d left, I’d alerted security.”
“Oh. Well . . . thank you.”
Kebron grunted and turned to head back to his post. Then Burgoyne said, with a little irritation, “You could have simply said so immediately, you know.”
“Yes.”
That was all he said in reply. Just “yes.” Then he returned to his station, leaving Burgoyne to sink back into hir chair and have, yet again, more sympathy for Elizabeth Shelby than s/he’d ever thought possible.
ii.
“I’m not happy about this.” Shelby had been lying in bed next to Calhoun, idly running her fingers across his bare chest. The lighting in his cabin was quite dim, and she was curled up next to him, basking in the afterglow of their activities. There was still a film of sweat on her, and she wondered—not for the first time—how it was that he was able to keep so cool and dry at such times. Perhaps, she reasoned, it had something to do with his Xenexian physiology. As for Shelby, her strawberry blond hair was hanging wet and sweaty around her face as she relaxed against him.
She twisted her body against his, bringing her bare left leg up and against his left thigh. “If you’re trying to make me feel inadequate as a wife and lover, Calhoun, that’s certainly just the right thing to say to me.”
His deep-set purple eyes looked at her blankly for a moment. Clearly he wasn’t connecting what he’d just said with the situation they were in. Then he laughed softly, causing the arm she had draped across his chest to rise and fall with the motion. “This isn’t the ‘this’ I was referring to. This ‘this’was fine.”
