Empress of Eternity

by L. E. Modesitt

When she finally reappeared, she sank into the other Laarnian chair without speaking.

  After seeing the tiredness in her eyes, without speaking, he went down to the lower level, cut some hard cheese, and rummaged around until he found some biscuits and wine. Then he brought up a plate of cheese and biscuits with two goblets and a bottle of wine. He set the platter and one goblet on the end of the low table nearest her and filled her goblet two-thirds full. “This might help.”

  “Thank you, dearest.”

  After pouring the wine into his own goblet, he settled into the matching chair and took several sips of the Boulena he’d chosen because Maarlyna preferred white, although he would have opened a red, had the question been one of his preferences. He watched as she slowly ate several slices of the white cheese and a biscuit…and as the color returned to her face.

  After a time, she looked at him. “You haven’t said much.”

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “About what?”

  Maertyn took another sip of the Boulena before replying. “About Tauzn. About me. About us.”

  This time Maarlyna was the one to wait for him to explain.

  “After hearing and half-watching all the others risk their existence to stand against…I guess you’d call it nothingness…how can I not do the same?”

  “Do the same? What do you mean?”

  “Tauzn sent assassins after me. He dispatched two dirigibles filled with Gaerda black-shirts. No one said a thing, I’m certain. No one did anything to stop him. Am I supposed to let him tear down a good civilization because no one else will take a stand against his fear-mongering?”

  “What do you think you’re going to do? The Vanir had over a hundred troopers. There’s no one else to help you.”

  “There were three Hu-Ruche…and I’m not alone. I have you, and you can put me exactly where I need to be.” He offered a smile, knowing it was false, and knowing that she knew it was false. Yet what else could he do?

  “I can’t help you once you leave the Bridge. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “You’d leave me?”

  He wanted to point out that, in many ways, she’d already left him. Instead, he said, “I think I’d find it hard to live with myself if I didn’t do what I could. Besides, the Gaerda won’t leave, and with them stationed outside, sooner or later, our food will run out. I can’t step outside of time—or the event-point—the way you can.”

  “I could do it for you,” she said.

  “Then what? Will I wake and fret that I did not act when I could? How long before I go truly mad and self-hating? With you and the Bridge, you can open his office…or at least his balcony to me, to place me inside most of his guards.”

  “The Bridge can do that,” she admitted. “What will you do then?”

  “I do what I must, and, after that, if I can, I make my way back north to the station and pray that I can enter it and find you. If not…” He swallowed. Finally, he spoke again. “We had each other for more and better years than would otherwise have been. If Tauzn becomes EA…then few indeed will have years like that. I could not spend eternity…or however long it might be…knowing that I had a chance…”

  “You will always have that chance…you know?”

  He shook his head. “The chance I will always have, but will I have the will? With each passing day or month or year or eon, or whatever, will it not become easier not to act? And as I see it, time within the canal flows the same for us. Is that because you’re the keeper…or because it’s necessary while I’m here?” He looked across the low table to her.

  Her only response was a wan smile.

  “Either way, that means that with each day, Tauzn gathers more strength.” He paused. “What time is it outside?”

  “Well past midnight.”

  “Then we have the night…and tomorrow…we each will do what must be…” He stood.

  So did she…and both their eyes were bright.

  60

  35 Quad 2471 R.E.

  When Eltyn finally emerged from darkness, he found himself on a pallet stretcher in a cool room. He turned his head. It throbbed so much that his eyes burned. He could see nothing, except that the light level was low. His lips were so chapped that they felt like he’d been amid the sands for days, but when he tried to moisten them, he couldn’t. His mouth was like dry cotton, and his tongue felt swollen.

  “Easy…” said a voice. “Just be still. I’ll give you some Revive. That will help.”

  Eltyn didn’t recognize the pleasant male voice, but in moments a tube was in his mouth.

  “Sip it slowly.”

  That was all that he could do at first.

  Before long his mouth felt more normal, and the splitting headache subsided into an unpleasant but bearable throbbing. The worst of the burning in his eyes died away, and he could make out a man in a pale green med-tech singlesuit.

  “What…about…the others?” Eltyn finally managed.

  “They’re here, too, but you’re the first to wake. That’s because you were the first to be interrogated and scanned.”

  “Does it…do any good? People…say anything…that much pain.”

  “It seems to work. It’s not what they say, but how their brain reacts.”

  Eltyn barely managed to avoid coughing and decided to stop trying to talk.

  “Just lie there for a while longer. You’ll know when you can sit up.”

  A little while longer turned into a doze, from which he was awakened by voices, and one of them was that of Faelyna.

  “…might work…but barbaric…”

  “Tech,” replied the man who had given Eltyn the Revive, “it might be barbaric, but I’m not in charge, and no one tampered with your mind. The RF doesn’t care what happens to people’s minds so long as they’re obedient and subservient.”

  Eltyn slowly sat up and glanced at Faelyna, who was sitting sideways on the pallet stretcher holding a beaker. She looked better than he felt, but he was very glad to see that. He offered a smile. “Quite an interrogation.”

  “Torture,” snapped Rhyana from where she sat on a straight-backed composite chair against the wall. “Might be better than the riffies, but it’s still torture.”

  The medical tech stepped toward Eltyn, holding a beaker. “You might want more of this.”

  Eltyn accepted the beaker and took a swallow. The taste was bearable. That was all he could have said for it.

  The door to the chamber opened. Chief Interrogator Bernyt stood there. “Now that you’re all awake with your identities verified, the Administrator would like to begin your debriefing by explaining a few things. This way.”

  Eltyn saw that Bernyt wasn’t the type for politeness or apologies, even when it would have smoothed things over. He took another swallow from the beaker, before handing it back to the med tech. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” The man did smile.

  Bernyt walked swiftly down the metal-walled corridor—not either of the ones through which they had entered Chiental—to the second side corridor and then to its end, where there was a blue door. She opened it.

  On the other side was a conference room with a table long enough to hold five chairs on a side, all upholstered in pale gray.

  “Take any chair you want, except for the one at the end.” Bernyt stood behind the chair to the right of the one at the far end. “The Administrator will be here shortly.” She sat down.

  Eltyn took the chair across from the one claimed by the interrogator, and Faelyna settled in beside him. He did reach out under the table and took her hand for a moment, squeezing it gently.

  While she didn’t look at him directly, there was a faint smile, and she squeezed his hand in return until he released her fingers.

  The four sat in silence. A wall panel on one side of the room slid open, and a small muscular older man in a pale gray singlesuit without insignia stepped into the conference room.

  Eltyn leaned forward as if to
rise, not that he wanted to.

  “Please stay seated. You’ve been through quite a bit,” offered the newcomer.

  Bernyt nodded to the speaker. “This is TechOversight Administrator Solano. He can explain why we had to put you through so much.”

  Solano slid gracefully into the seat at the end of the table. “I regret the depth and pain of the interrogation. I can assure you that the effects will pass…if not immediately.” He offered a regretful smile. “We’ve had five deep RF plants attempt to infiltrate over the past few days. Fortunately, they made contact with outlying stations so that Chiental’s location was not compromised. Then when you three arrived, everyone feared the worst. That was why Senior Tech Bernyt’s efforts were necessary.” He nodded toward the brown-eyed and unsmiling interrogator.

  “You two are who you claim to be.” Bernyt gestured to Eltyn and Faelyna. “Your records and responses and genetics check, and your brain prints match. The pain and nerve jolts were absolutely necessary, because any brain overlay distorts in a clearly identifiable way under nerve pain. A non-overlaid brain print doesn’t.” She looked to Rhyana. “With you, we had a bit more trouble. We had to check consistency there.”

  The delivery woman glared at Bernyt, but said nothing.

  Bernyt looked back at Solano as if to indicate that she had said all that was necessary.

  “Now…” continued the Administrator, “I had to admit that your initial story…report…seemed more than fantastic. But we have been able to verify it from a number of unimpeachable sources—the chaos in Hururia alone suggests that you, or whatever entity aided you, managed quite a disruption. All the reports indicate that a brilliant rainbow arched from the south and touched the Ruche dome—which then exploded and collapsed the building beneath. Here we checked the outside scanners. They recorded a rainbow of light, magnitudes brighter than a natural rainbow, also arching from the south over the peaks and down onto the lodge. When we compared the data from our back-channel snoops, the spectra match what happened over Hururia just before the top of the Ruche dome exploded. Many of The Twenty appear to have been inside, but we won’t know who for a time. What we’d like to know is how you accomplished that.”

  “We didn’t.” Faelyna’s voice was resigned. “I told your interrogator that.”

  “You both told the same fantastic story, and it matches the data, but it would be most useful if we could obtain access to that technology.”

  “I don’t think that’s likely,” answered Eltyn. “The Bridge systems indicated that future access to the canal station—or the Bridge—would not be possible.” The keeper hadn’t said anything like that, but she also had been very clear about their departure, even to their taking the dead riffie.

  “You couldn’t learn anything about the systems?” asked the Administrator.

  “We didn’t say that,” Faelyna interjected. “I can give you the design and specifications for the equipment we used to control a few things in the station. I can even give you the practical and theoretical basis for the first-level control system. There are several difficulties, though. The control system is multilayered, and we never deciphered the other levels. The main problem is that we brought the systems on-line by what we did, and they took over, and locked us out. The Bridge systems even challenged us to try to unlock things. We couldn’t.”

  Eltyn nodded. Faelyna had thought out, better than he had, how to explain what had happened in a way that would be understandable to TechOversight. Whether it would be acceptable was another matter.

  He added, “In the end, we didn’t have much choice. The systems did blow off the top of the Ruche dome. We hoped that, and the rainbow, would create a symbol that TechOversight could use as a rallying point to restore The Fifty…or to topple The Twenty and replace them with a system that is less tyrannical.”

  Faelyna didn’t even blink at his statement.

  Solano looked to Bernyt.

  The interrogator nodded.

  “That’s emotionally rationalizable enough that it might work.” Solano paused. “We’d need something that would generate that more frequently.”

  “A set of tuned lasers might do it,” mused Eltyn. “You might be able to focus them on aerogels or water vapor. That’s not my expertise, but I think it would be feasible.”

  Solano nodded slowly. “It might at that.” After another moment, he said, “Tell me more about these Bridge…systems…and how you discovered what you did.”

  Eltyn looked to Faelyna.

  “You start,” she said.

  “We knew that the doors and windows opened to human touch,” began Eltyn. “That’s something that’s been known for years…centuries. No one has ever known how the stone resists all energies or how or why the entry systems worked. We were assigned to see if we could determine that…” From there he went on to describe all their efforts through his failed attempts, finishing with, “…based on that, Faelyna decided on another approach. It was more successful.” He looked to her.

  “The key seemed to be recognition and intent…” Faelyna continued.

  More than an hour passed, between their reports and the Administrator’s questions, before Solano leaned back slightly in his chair. “Very interesting. We will likely have other questions, but that will do for now.”

  “What do you expect from us now?” Eltyn shifted his weight. Despite the padding in the chair, every movement still hurt, and probably would…possibly for weeks.

  “From you three?” The TechOversight Administrator smiled warmly. “We could very much use your and Tech Faelyna’s technical skills in the laboratories and workshops here. We lost all too many of our higher-level techs.”

  “No fighting?” asked Rhyana.

  “If you want to, you can, but Tech Eltyn and Tech Faelyna are too valuable to hazard.” He paused. “Besides, I don’t see how you could contribute more to the reformation’s military effort than you already did, and it appears likely that we will be incorporating the rainbow as the symbol of the reformation.”

  “How is the…reformation…going?” asked Faelyna.

  “We’ve already regained control of most of Primia, except the immediate area around Hururia, but after the destruction of the Ruche dome by the rainbow, and the probable death of a number of The Twenty, we’d be very surprised if we didn’t have The Fifty reestablished by the end of the year…with a few changes…of course.”

  “Such as?” asked Eltyn warily.

  “We’re going to have to widen the forum for discussion and disagreement and change the idea that questioning equates to rebellion or that uncertainty, particularly with regard to science and public policy, means weakness…” Solano rose from the chair. “If you will excuse me and the interrogator. There are a few other demands on my time.” He smiled. “One of my assistants will be with you shortly to work out quarters and provide you with passes and codes…and the other details of life here in Chiental.” With a last smile, he turned and departed.

  Bernyt followed Solano, but without a backward glance or a smile.

  Eltyn did note that the wall panel, presumably to the Administrator’s office, remained open after the two had left.

  In some ways, reflected Eltyn, none of it made sense…and yet it did.

  He turned to Faelyna. “We suffered more at the hands of TechOversight than at the hands of The Twenty, although The Twenty certainly tried harder to destroy us and the station. After everything we’ve been through, we accomplished more by throwing a pebble than by anything else either of us did.”

  “You wouldn’t have been able to throw that pebble if it hadn’t been for everything else we did,” she said with a smile.

  “Everything else you did,” he corrected. “My approaches didn’t work. Yours did.”

  “We did it together.”

  He looked directly into her eyes. “I’d like to do far more…everything…together.”

  Faelyna leaned toward him, taking his right hand in both of hers. “So would I.”

/>   61

  10 Tenmonth 1351, Unity of Caelaarn

  After a long and bittersweet evening with Maarlyna, during which he had not so much loved her as clung to her, Maertyn spent most of the remainder of the night fully awake…amid infrequent brief periods of dozing. He would have preferred to have left then, but there was little point in that, since he only knew where to reach Tauzn during the day.

  They spoke little as they prepared for the day and dressed, but Maertyn kept looking at Maarlyna, wondering how it had all come to the point where all his efforts to save her had led inexorably to his having to leave her, possibly forever…if he failed.

  Do you really have to do this? That he had asked himself more than once over the long night. But how could he not? He, and he alone, from what he knew, had the ability to stop a tyrant before matters worsened. How did a man live with himself if he refused that opportunity? He didn’t want to follow the example of the Laarnian martyrs…but he had to do…something.

  Arm in arm, they walked down to the lower level, where they shared tea and not-quite-stale bread slathered with sweet orange preserves. He wanted to say something more to her about how much she meant…and how he didn’t want to leave her…

  All of that would merely have repeated what he had murmured the night before…and made him seem somehow…pathetic.

  So he smiled and looked at her, trying to create a lasting image in his mind.

  Then, as the time drew near, they walked back up to the main level, where he checked the pair of stunners that had been in the crate Rhesten had sent so many days before. He also fingered the ice hammer, before putting it in the inside pocket of the formal ministry jacket he’d chosen to wear—a maroon and silver-gray lord’s jacket for all of that.

  “Is it time yet?” he asked “I want to be in his office just before he returns from his morning staff meeting.”

  “Almost. What if he doesn’t have a meeting?”

  “Then he’s there…or he’s not, and I’ll work around it.” He slipped the stunners into the side pockets of the jacket, then walked toward the south door of the station, where he stopped. “Let it be done…dearest. I will return…as I can.”