by Chris Walley
“You mean that the deaths of Ilyas and Slee in some way heighten God’s mercy to the rest of us?” Merral heard the skepticism in his voice.
Luke frowned. “I wouldn’t express it like that. I don’t know how you can express it without sounding trite or banal. But light needs darkness to show its glory.”
“I find that unsatisfactory.”
“Of course.” Luke gazed at him with sad eyes. “Maybe he withholds the answers to remind us that he alone is God.”
“Perhaps.”
Luke seemed to stare into a corner for a moment. “Merral, I am not immune from such questions. But if we understood God, we would be God . . . or greater.”
“I suppose so,” Merral said and left it at that.
But the difficulties had not gone away.
With the reduction in military preparation, there was more free time on the return voyage. Those on board the ship occupied themselves in different ways, from sketching to juggling to crochet. Despite carrying a greater workload than most, Merral found himself with time to spare and so began slipping back to his private world of the castle tree. He found it increasingly engrossing and was soon spending well over an hour a day immersed in his make-believe world. Convinced that he now had a viable organism, he began to turn his focus to the challenge of making his tree breed. He created winged seeds that, on hot days, fell out from the outermost branches, glided away, and were then carried high by thermals to drift away for hours or even days. But he found that too many of the glider seeds were falling to the ground in dry soils, and he began to experiment with ways of making seeds that would land only on warm, moist soil. In the end, he created seeds with cells on their undersides that were sensitive to water vapor and to what, outside Below-Space, would have been the color green. When the glide path took the seeds over ground of just the right color and an adequate humidity, the wings detached, allowing the seed to fall to the ground.
Pleased as he was with his progress, Merral sometimes found himself concerned by the amount of time he spent tending and endlessly fine-tuning the giant tree. A defense came easily. I need an escape. Here, I relax. My artificial trees are the only real nature we have in these ashen worlds of Below-Space. Yet he recognized that ultimately, the big attraction of this world was that here things were simpler. Here, if I make a mistake, I can just restore a previous version and move on. Here, Slee and Ilyas do not die. Here, I am not faced with Isabella and Anya. Here, there is no war.
And so he continued to visit the simulation. After all, he told himself, it doesn’t affect my duties as mission commander.
Vero, utterly engrossed with his Augmented Library, barely noticed his friend’s preoccupation.
“Not quite the sum of all human knowledge,” he said quietly to himself once as he stared at the gleaming cube, “but pretty close to it.” And my task is somehow to master it.
For hours on end, stopping only briefly to visit the bathroom or get a glass of water, he pored over the data, cross-checking and annotating files. Every so often he would copy some piece of information into an ever-growing compilation.
Sometimes he would read for an hour only to realize that he had learned absolutely nothing, and his spirits would fail him. Then he would suddenly stumble across some nugget of knowledge on the Krallen, or the lord-emperor, or the structure of the fleet, and he would see how worthwhile it all was.
Vero’s studies ranged forward and backward in time. He now had files that went back a long way; accounts—not all in agreement with each other—of the great conflict that had ended the Rebellion. (Not, of course, that it was ever called that in any of the Freeborn accounts.) He even found narratives that went back before the Rebellion, which gave William Jannafy’s version of the great debates that had split the embryonic Assembly. Comparing them with the Assembly accounts he had long known gave Vero much cause for thought.
The only sources of knowledge he did not consult were the books he had acquired from the priest’s room. He had glanced at them, and what he saw had so bemused and appalled him that he’d simply wrapped them up in black cloth and put them away under the bed. He resolved that he would look at them again only when he had utterly exhausted all the possibilities of conventional knowledge.
Ten days into the journey, Luke came in to see him, bearing two steaming mugs.
“Vero, you missed the coffee break.” He handed over a mug and lowered himself onto the bed, the only spare space in the room. “I thought I’d better come and chase you down.”
“Oh, is it that time?” Vero made a slightly apologetic gesture to the wallscreen, which showed a large technical drawing. “Thank you; I got engrossed. There’s a lot here on the Allenix.”
Luke squinted at it. “Not my sort of engineering. Looks like what would be the nervous system in a human.”
“It is.”
Luke’s gaze turned to Vero. “And is your knowledge useful?”
Luke is worried about me; that’s why he’s here. “Very much.” Vero wondered whether or not to tell Luke about the fact that he had just found out how to access Betafor’s internal data. He decided not to. She may be listening. “And, Luke, there’s a lot more where that came from. On the lord-emperor, for a start.”
The chaplain gave him an encouraging look. “Tell me about him. He is a puzzle. I was expecting someone far more . . .” He shrugged. “Awesome? Maybe. In appearance, he seemed the most ordinary of men. But then, appearances deceive.”
“Yes. H-he is an enigma. Even, I think, to his own people. There are mysteries about him. Yes, he is used by the powers. But he has achieved extraordinary things, he possesses an extraordinary energy, and he is utterly r-ruthless. He punishes failure without mercy.”
Luke cradled the cup. “What drives him?”
“Something very deep and very dark.” Vero paused, trying to express something he felt was inexpressible. “Nezhuala reminds me of Jannafy. There is the same hunger for knowledge, whatever the cost. The same hatred of boundaries. The same desire to go further than he ought.”
“The enemies of God’s people have always resembled each other; the Devil is not very inventive. Are there any differences from Jannafy?”
“Yes. History never repeats itself exactly. He is a harder man. Jannafy probed and speculated and then—reluctantly, I think—rebelled. This man has gone further. I think he could kill every man, woman, and child in the Assembly without losing a moment’s sleep if he felt it would serve his purposes.”
“Do you think he is human?”
Vero found himself staring at a blank wall. “Luke, I have no idea. His origins are obscure. The records talk a lot about gene-engineering of humans; so that is a real possibility. Did someone, in the end, create a monster?” He turned to Luke. “What do you think?”
There was a silence before Luke spoke in a tone of somber certainty. “Oh, I have no doubt: he’s human.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Vero, as you admit, such men have appeared before. Nezhuala is just the latest, and perhaps the worst, of his kind. Certainly the most powerful. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. Or suns.”
The silence between them returned and endured for some time as they drank their coffee. Then Luke gestured at the screen. “You’re working long hours on this.”
As I expected, he’s concerned for me. “I th-think it needs doing. We desperately need knowledge. Knowledge allowed us to defeat the Krallen. Knowledge gained us this ship.”
Luke made no answer but just stared at him, and Vero found that his defensiveness had deepened. “Wh-what I have here is a vast database on our enemy. I know where he comes from, more or less. I know what he wants, and I know his forces. If we can get this—” he reached out to stroke the cube on his desk—“to Earth, it may make all the difference.” As he spoke, Vero remembered the books of the priest that lay under his bed. He felt a sudden sharp pang of guilt.
“I can see the logic,” Luke said, but Vero sensed concern, rather than
conviction, in the chaplain’s face. “And have you found anything yet that will help us defeat them?”
“No. Not yet. But, Luke, for the first time, we have access to both Dominion and Assembly data. I can put these things together. It is a potent cocktail.”
An eyebrow flickered. “A what?”
“A kind of beer. I think.”
Luke drained his coffee and stood up with a smile. “Well, then, you’d better make sure that it doesn’t make you drunk.”
Then he left, and as the door closed behind him, Vero sat staring at it, his thoughts freewheeling.
Are there dangers? He saw his fingers interweaving. There are dangers in all conflicts. Merral is called to fight one battle. Surely I am called to fight another.
He considered the package that lay under his bed. Eventually, he decided he would reduce the chance of temptation. He borrowed Kappaten for a few hours and had her flick through the books and scan the pages. On the off chance he might learn something, he asked her some questions about her past and the Dominion. But on anything sensitive, her answers were evasive; Betafor appeared to have placed restrictions on what she could say. In the end he took the files she had produced and dismissed her. Vero stored the files safely away on his main data folder under multiple levels of passwords and then consigned the books to the onboard incinerator.
Yes, there probably are dangers in these things. But I have minimized them.
The Sacrifice had been in the steely emptiness of Below-Space for almost a week, and color had become no more than a memory, when Isabella realized that she had reached something of a crisis point.
For some perverse reason, she had been allocated a compartment with Lola Munez, the former head of the delegate team. Lola was at least twenty years older and seemed to spend a lot of her time lying on her bed either praying or singing slow, minor-key hymns—activities which increasingly got on Isabella’s nerves. But there was little point in leaving her cabin, because it seemed impossible to be on her own anywhere else. Here we are, in the infinity of space, and I can’t find anywhere to be alone.
But today Lola had gone to visit someone, and Isabella had the tiny compartment to herself. So she lay on her bed, with her hands behind her head, staring up at the ceiling.
I don’t belong to the ship now. Oh yes, everyone is studiously polite to me. They make sure that I am included in all the activities. Yet I can almost touch the barrier between them and me.
She stared up at the ceiling, noticing that a gray corkscrew, rather like an animated plant root, was twisting down through the ceiling. How odd that such manifestations, which had once aroused fear, now barely generated curiosity. She forced her thoughts back to her own predicament.
So what do I do about it?
Looking at matters as carefully and objectively as she could, she realized that she had made mistakes. There seemed little doubt that Merral’s description of events on Farholme was far closer to the truth than that of Lezaroth. And possibly—just possibly—she had put herself too far forward. I made enemies.
Again the question returned. So . . . what do I do about it?
One possibility, she decided with reluctance, was to go and apologize to Merral and admit her mistakes. She could ask for forgiveness. To take that road, she felt oddly certain, would ultimately lead to some sort of reconciliation and a healing of the relationship with him.
She considered this as a strategy. It is not inviting. Should I admit that I might have been wrong? Can I live with the demeaning shame of having to admit that I had been driven too far by ambition? They will gloat over me!
She recoiled at the idea and found many reasons to reject it. After all, I’m not alone in having made mistakes. Why should it be I that must do all the turning?
She recognized too that another factor had to be considered. This ship, ultimately, was not just bound for Farholme but Ancient Earth. All those who made that journey would inevitably be caught up at the very heart of the awesome events that were now unfolding and would affect every human being alive. She wanted to be involved. Of course, the dream that Lezaroth had nurtured that she might act as an intermediary between the Assembly and the Dominion was now seen as a bitter and cruel fraud. Yet, why shouldn’t I play my part? Surely I have as much right as Merral to go to Earth. I was involved at the very start of matters with the Dominion, and if it hadn’t been for Merral’s culpable refusal to reveal the truth to me, I might have stayed involved.
“I want to go to Earth,” she whispered aloud with a fierce intensity.
And if I seek forgiveness, that hope will be destroyed. I will have to admit that my judgment is fallible. And if I admit that, then why should they take me? All that I have achieved will be at an end.
Just then the door opened and Lola Munez entered, sat down with a weary heaviness on her bed, and began to ask how Isabella was. Isabella made some vague and noncommittal response, and then, after the minimum interval that might be considered polite, said that she needed a walk and left the compartment.
She found herself heading to the rear of the ship. I need to be alone. I don’t want to be with Lola. I am myself. I am me.
As she walked down a stairway to the lowest level—passing around something that was awfully like a gigantic six-limbed starfish emerging from a wall—a new thought came to her. At the very heart of her world—wasn’t it the very meaning of the word assembly?—was the idea of unity, of sharing, of cooperation. She realized that in her heart of hearts she really didn’t like that. I don’t want to be always linked to other people. I want to become what I am supposed to be.
She had hoped that the lowest level would allow her to be on her own, but today it seemed full of people either jogging or walking. This ship may be big, but there doesn’t seem to be enough space for me to be on my own.
She had come to the end of the corridor now. There was a door before her, and on it a note was pasted. She had seen it before—who hadn’t?
Aft hold is off limits. Commander Merral D’Avanos.
Below it was his signature.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” she said under her breath. Even here, he has put his imprint. He has to declare his rule.
Well, I don’t care about it. She glanced around to see that, for once, the corridor behind was empty.
With a quick, smooth movement, she opened the door and walked in. There, as the lighting came on, she checked the door to make sure she could open it again. I know enough about spacecraft to know not to get trapped behind some one-way door. Then she closed it behind her and gazed around.
What she saw before her was a lofty space stacked high with an assortment of large, rectangular containers that stretched up to the ceiling. They were neatly arranged so that there was a broad access avenue between them. She noticed details such as the variety of the containers, the weird Saratan labeling, and the diverse entry hatches and locks. The air here was strangely still, although she felt that the vibration from the engines seemed just a bit louder here.
There is a lot of space down here.
She walked on, careful to avoid a writhing column of mist that looked like a tree trunk. She passed three containers and found on her right a space occupied by a large freight air lock. Past that was another large container and then a smaller structure, which appeared to be fixed to the floor, with a sliding door on the front. She stopped and, on impulse, tugged the door open and peered in to see an array of solid boxes and piles of folded fabric. The door had a lock, and she checked to see if it could be operated from the inside. Satisfied, she walked in and sat down on one of the fabric piles.
Isabella looked around. It was hardly a pleasant room—more dust than she would have liked—but it was private. And that’s what I need to put my thoughts in order.
She wiped the dust away and sat down. Will they miss me? Hardly. She checked her diary. The signal was still strong. They can always call me.
She sat for some time in the quiet solitude, considering matters until she came t
o a decision. The idea of admitting mistakes and asking forgiveness is utterly impossible. I will stand up for what I believe. I will put myself first. And when we get to Farholme, I will seek some sort of justice for myself. She felt herself smile; the word justice had a fine ring.
Yes. I will seek justice for myself. And perhaps Merral will have to ask forgiveness of me. Personally, publicly. That too was a fine thought.
She felt a tiny, sharp stab of guilt and a thought came to her with the clarity of a voice: You want revenge. She hesitated only a moment before retaliating. It’s not revenge I seek; only justice. I have my rights!
She began to see with a strange clarity that she didn’t really like any of them. Merral—was a deeply flawed character. A courageous leader, yes—in some circumstances at least—but also reckless and headstrong. And the General is increasingly capable of sacrificing his own people in order to pursue his own ends. She suddenly realized she’d given Merral a nickname. How appropriate: the General. It would be an interesting game to give them all nicknames.
The one person she felt she had any real sympathy with was Luke. But even there, she felt some degree of self-righteousness. He is a Pharisee. Superficial, sanctimonious. In unthinking obedience to the past. The Pharisee. As she thought it she knew it wasn’t true, but that didn’t seem to matter.
And the others? Well, there was Vero the Dataman, who seemed far more concerned with data than with human beings. Then Lloyd . . . Ah yes. The Trainee Thug. Anya?What shall I call her? The Biologist? No, not sharp enough. Wait . . . Anya had failed at the height of the fighting. She had run away; they all knew that. Got it! Not just the biologist but the Invertebrate Biologist. The biologist without a backbone.
She felt another sharp stab of guilt and another accusatory thought. You hate them now.
Isabella considered the accusation for a few moments. It’s a survival strategy. I either despair and sink into self-pity, or I hate. I choose the latter. Slightly unnerved by her own thoughts, Isabella decided it was time to go. No point in being discovered; I want to be able to return here.
