by Mike Freeman
“I'll try to match your jealousy for me with my pity for you, Ekker.”
Ekker scowled.
“It's not jealousy, Stone, you're just not going to get any.”
Stone felt rather smug as he poured himself a coffee.
“Oh really?”
“I might step in and take a little myself.”
Stone snorted as he strolled back to sit against the table.
“Women see through your type, Ekker.”
Intrepido walked in, heading directly for the coffee.
Ekker’s eyes narrowed.
“And what type is that?”
“Oh I don't know... mainly, just not that much fun.”
Ekker sneered.
“Not all these bitches want fun, Stone.”
Stone clasped his chin theatrically.
“Hmm, I think I see your issue with the fairer sex right there, Ekker. It's subtle but I think I've got it.”
Ekker stepped forward, squaring up a little.
“And just what is my issue?”
Stone looked Ekker up and down.
“Well the symptoms are classic... angry, poor impulse control, perhaps a little neurotic. Women can sense the real problem...”
“Oh yeah?”
Stone coughed the word.
“Impotence.”
Intrepido barked out a laugh.
Ekker's lip curled further as he looked down at Stone’s side arm. Havoc had given Stone a more manageable Tregler Five to replace his Midar Handcannon. Ekker stared at him.
“You even know how to use that thing?”
Stone laughed.
“You going to challenge me to a duel, Ekker?”
“You not going to fight for your little whore, Stone?”
Stone shook his head at this childishness.
“Maybe I should teach you a lesson.”
“Oh yeah?”
Intrepido leaned back against the cabinets on the far side of the room.
“Fighting talk.”
Stone put a finger to his lips, pretending to think about it.
“I guess female anatomy would be a good first lesson. But then, will you ever need to know anything about it, Ekker?”
Intrepido laughed and shook his head.
Ekker stepped forward.
“You little fuck.”
Stone chuckled. What was Ekker going to do? Hit him? He raised an eyebrow.
“So you finally acknowledge that I can get some action, unlike––”
Stone didn't see it coming; he just felt a crushing blow to the side of his head. He felt shocked as much as hurt. Another blur came in. Stone turned his head away and twisted his arm to block the strike, covering himself with coffee.
The second blow collided with his cheekbone and Stone cried out in pain and surprise. His vision blacked out momentarily as Ekker punched him squarely on the forehead. Stunned and disoriented, Stone threw up his arms to protect himself. Ekker speared him with a vicious right hook and Stone’s legs folded underneath him. He banged off the table and collapsed to the floor. His face stung and his head was ringing. He thought maybe his nose and cheekbone were broken. He moaned as he raised himself up onto one elbow. Blood trickled from his nose and mouth.
Ekker leaned over him. The brute wasn't even drawing breath.
“Any more witty comments, Stone?”
Stone felt nervous. His words came out thick and slurred.
“Alright, Ekker, you made your point.”
“Oh have I?”
Stone felt a thundering impact as Ekker punched him in the face. There was a hot, stinging sensation where Ekker's fist had struck. Warm blood poured into Stone’s mouth where his teeth had cut his cheek. He'd had enough. He didn't understand why Intrepido hadn't jumped in to stop Ekker. He muttered through blood and phlegm.
“Help me, Rodrigo.”
Intrepido shrugged.
“Big boys’ games, big boys’ rules.”
Ekker stepped back.
“What he's saying, Stone, is don't start––”
Ekker kicked him in the stomach. Stone whiplashed forward, gagging and clutching his solar plexus. The blow hurt so much that he struggled to breathe. He brought up his knees to try to relieve the pain.
“––what you can’t finish,” Ekker said.
Stone was hurt and winded. He just wanted it to stop. Ekker was on their security team to protect him. There were rules. This shouldn't be happening. He felt scared. He didn’t know how far Ekker would go. He glanced up.
“Please.”
Ekker’s face lit up like a child at a surprise birthday party.
“Oh, please? Please now? No Havoc to step in and protect you while you––”
Ekker's punch struck Stone above the eye. Stone cried out and threw his hands over his head.
Ekker kicked him in his exposed midriff again.
“––strut around––”
Stone cried out, sobbing and helpless.
“No. Please.”
He thought maybe a rib cracked as pain shot through him. He moved his hands down to his midriff before he could stop himself, his reaction instinctive and predictable. Ekker punched him in the head again, pulverizing his face.
“Please, no more!”
Stone felt his face dissolving into a mass of pulped meat. His right eye was a narrow slit in a puffy bruise. He squinted up and saw his blood smeared over Ekker's fists.
“––like you own the fucking place––”
Stone feebly waved his arms over his head. He was crying now.
“No please!”
“––you little fuck!”
Ekker shouted the last word as he kicked Stone full in the balls. Stone shrieked as the pain in his abdomen made him dry retch. He rocked back and forth like a child in shock, moaning and crying, barely able to see with his blurred and bloody vision.
Ekker stripped the pistol from Stone’s waist then stepped back. Ekker loomed over Stone, his hands on his hips, surveying his handiwork. Intrepido drank his coffee as he casually observed.
Stone’s blood dripped onto the floor as the pain reverberated across his body. He saw Tyburn's outline enter and take in the scene as he walked across the room. Stone mumbled, barely coherent with his mouth full of blood and his lips thick and shredded.
“Tyburn, help me. Get him off me.”
Tyburn helped himself to coffee.
“Alright, Ekker, that's enough. And Stone?”
Stone lifted his head, his blood coagulating on his face.
“Ngh?”
Tyburn didn’t even look at him.
“Stop provoking Ekker.”
94.
“The Eliminator is the name of this ship.”
The alien’s answer shut everyone up. In the pause, Havoc received a message from Novosa.
“You need to get outside. Code five-two.”
Code five was the Gathering of the Truly Faithful. The two meant two Gathering ships dropping into the atmosphere and heading for the pyramid.
Partly out of habit and partly because he didn’t have a better alternative Havoc tried to communicate confidentially with the team.
> We need to go.
“You leave?” the voice said.
Havoc said nothing.
Abbott knew that Havoc wouldn’t cut it short without due cause.
“We have to leave.”
“You will meet more of your species?” the voice said.
Abbott nodded.
“Yes.”
“Is this another faction of your species?”
Abbott smiled.
“I thank you, Ualus. Does your species have a name?”
“I am an Aulusthran. I do not know how the system will translate this.”
“Ualus the Aulusthran, it has been an honor to talk to you. I look forward to bringing our species together. We shall return shortly. Thank you.”
“Michael Abbott, it has been an honor to talk to you. I look forward to bringing our sp
ecies together. Thank you.”
Abbott stepped off the altar and the light faded. Nobody spoke as they descended the steps. They left the equipment in place as they moved quickly for the exit. Havoc stopped at the passageway to count everyone out. Abbott sounded excited as he strode down the corridor.
“This creature could be the key to everything.”
Havoc touched Stephanie’s back as he waved her into the passage. To his surprise she pushed him away.
“Are you ok?”
She spoke without slowing.
“I’m fine.”
Havoc slowed, confused. Stephanie’s capricious nature should come as no surprise to him, of course. Jafari came alongside him and they hustled down the passageway together. Jafari’s eyes gleamed.
“Are you aware of the prophecies of our Lord, the One True God? The return of the Redeemer after the journeys of the Sixteen Prophets of Halambra. His followers save Him from the infidel, who has trapped Him in His tomb after He returns to life. How they battle to free Him––”
Oh shit, Havoc thought. The Halambran faith that Jafari shared with the Gathering of the Truly Faithful. The Prophecy of Return. The deliverance of their Redeemer from the hands of the infidel. When their Redeemer came back to life and was rescued by his faithful followers.
Jafari’s voice was triumphant.
“––from a pyramid.”
95.
Weaver sipped a cup of Fournier's coffee as she took a break.
Touvenay stood in front of his three screens manipulating ideograms, grammar specifications and translations at a dizzying speed. The left hand screen collected Touvenay’s thoughts regarding a grammar framework for the unending permutations of symbols they’d uncovered, the center screen displayed example ideograms and language fragments and the right hand screen was filled with possible mappings to the myriad of human languages that Touvenay was familiar with.
Despite Touvenay's impressive display, Weaver found her attention inexorably drawn back to Fournier. Fournier seemed to switch instantly to total immersion in his work without requiring any of the ramp time that Weaver needed. Fournier toiled over his writing board, thoroughly absorbed in his work. Weaver concentrated on Fournier’s output as she tried to grasp what he was thinking, focusing so hard that she didn't realize she was edging closer in the process.
Fournier wrote in deft, assertive strokes, creating solutions the way a master sculptor would cut, score and caress an emergent work from a block of alabaster. Instead of using a chisel or a file, Fournier's instrument was his mind and it surpassed the craftsmanship of the finest artisan's tool – sharp, agile and precise in shaping a problem into a solution.
Fournier scribed great swathes of algebraic utterances as he sought to capture the essence of something he'd seen in the sequences. He wrote quickly, ignoring obvious mistakes as he sprinted to excavate as much as he could from his subconscious before it crumbled away. Fournier’s focus was absolute; he spurned details as he ruthlessly reified his intuition on the board. Like an erratic teletype, Fournier would aperiodically switch directions, shifting left or right as he annotated here, scored out there, marking up this, adjusting that, before he launched across the board again, sallying forth from his temporarily besieged redoubt to take another position. It was something to see; Fournier at the height of his powers, attacking a problem. It made Weaver slightly breathless to watch – she might be an art student peering over the shoulder of Monet in his garden in Giverny.
Weaver knew she was a shoveler. Her advances came from the painstaking collection and methodical analysis of voluminous quantities of data. Her advances in theory were refinements driven by thousands of data points and, like any scientist in the trenches, more than ninety five percent of her studies were negative confirmation that showed what didn't work, didn't explain or didn't exist. To her, Fournier's ability to attack a problem from an abstract position, encompassing the field of battle in his mind and creating solutions from there, was a magical power that was simply beyond her. She was the baffled police inspector to Fournier's brilliant detective. Where Fournier conceived of a solution in an abstract flash of brilliance and then reached to the data for his confirmation, data was Weaver’s daily bread – the wool that she spun and the corn that she ground. Fournier's approach was as mysterious to her as the sun rising over a village of savages.
For all that, as Weaver watched Fournier pushing forward and forming connections, she started to feel that she had a grasp of his idea. She felt like a pillion passenger behind Fournier in the saddle, starting to pick up the rhythm and idiosyncrasies of his mount. She was drawn in and felt, as she was increasingly absorbed, lifted into the same flowing state that Fournier must be experiencing.
“You think we have something here?”
Weaver turned to Fournier in surprise as she was jolted back to the present. Bizarrely, she felt that Fournier had interrupted her rather than the other way around. She realized that while watching him she'd come to stand behind him. She examined the board as she considered Fournier’s question. It felt different now that she’d stepped back from it rather than living it. Before she’d been inside and part of it, now she was outside and separate. It wasn't the same. She wasn’t sure.
“I don't know.”
Fournier watched her closely.
“I saw you working the sequences before, trying to access the one hundred and twenty eighth index. Your approach gave me the idea. The idea is instinctively yours.”
She blinked at Fournier, surprised. He held out the pen. She frowned at it. He pushed it toward her.
“Take it.”
She took the pen.
Fournier gestured at the board as he stepped back.
“Go ahead.”
Weaver tried to think about where Fournier was in the problem. Where they were in the problem. To map out what Fournier was trying to do. She didn't really do theory at this level. Without concrete data to work from she felt cut adrift. She would have to, in a sense, invent data. It felt like taking liberties.
She read back along the last two rows, trying to pick up the rhythm. Before Fournier had stopped she'd had a strong sense of where he was heading. She tried to feel it but it evaded her. She had a sense of it though and she started to write. She sped up for a moment, focusing hard, concentrating on the problem, on the form of the solution. She saw a step and took it, thinking about what it would mean ahead, the branching implications from here. She forced herself forward. She wrote several terms, stepped to the right several times, when she petered out and stopped. It was wrong, inelegant and it jarred with what had gone before.
She gasped in surprise as Fournier's hand closed over hers. He wrapped her hand in his unexpectedly strong grip. His skin was warm with a rough, abrasive texture. He leaned forward. His breath smelt of coffee. From amidst his white hair, flattened nose and the ravines on his face, his eyes pierced out at her, fierce and unblinking.
“Too much thinking, not enough doing.”
She stared back at him, frozen.
His voice rasped at her.
“You worry so much about what might happen, about where you might go, that you cannot get anywhere.”
He swung his free hand back toward the plinths.
“When you access the plinths you don't have the luxury of time, you must exist in the present, so you do. But here you have time, so you think and plan and consider from outside yourself, so you cannot flow.”
He gripped her hand tighter and she flushed.
“Don't think about what might happen, focus on what is happening. Trust yourself. Feel the rhythm of it. Flow.”
He released her hand. Weaver realized she'd been holding her breath. She breathed. Fournier gestured at the board.
“Finish it for me.”
She stood feeling a little startled. Fournier took a few paces then turned back.
“You're the air not the earth. You're too heavy. Add lightness.”
Fournier walked away toward the cof
fee machine.
Weaver turned back to the screen. She felt she'd just had a glimpse of something beyond herself, but she wasn't sure how to act on what Fournier had told her.
'Trust yourself', 'exist in the present'; these sounded well and good but how to do that? She thought about Fournier’s last expression, 'add lightness' – what could it possibly mean, to 'add lightness'? It wasn't logical.
She gazed at the board, her eyes unfocused.
'Add lightness'.
The concept was so incongruous that her mind dislocated each time she focused on it. Without even thinking, she started again. 'Add lightness', 'you're the air not the earth'. It was psychobabble bullshit. Her mind couldn't get a lock on it. She would dismiss it as garbage from anyone but Fournier. If Fournier believed he had a key to unlock her, she was ready to try. She didn't even focus on the stream of algebra flowing from her pen. 'Add lightness'. She wasn't even sure how to begin apply the idea. It didn't make sense. She was a rational person. Why was she even wasting time on this nonsense?
Kemensky stood next to her. When had he come over?
She gasped.
There were another seven lines across the board underneath Fournier's original five. She didn't understand where the time had gone. Kemensky was looking at her. He had a strange expression on his face. They regarded each other. He nodded at the board.
“It's beautiful. It's... a breakthrough.”
She stared at the board, taking it in, floating on a wave of euphoria. Her face broke into a beaming smile and she hugged a startled Kemensky. She felt suffused with joy and wanted to share it with Fournier. She ran over to celebrate their success. She'd done something that she knew she couldn't do. She hadn't felt like this since she was a little girl, running to show her dad the proof she'd just completed. She felt dizzy with empowerment as she rushed up behind him.
Fournier was bent down over the coffee machine, fumbling with it. He tried to put in a filter upside down. He pressed it in and it wouldn't fit. She frowned as he repeated the action.
“Jed?”
Fournier turned to face her. She could see immediately that his eyes were vacant, with no trace of her mentor remaining.
