Slave Empire III - The Shrike

by Southwell, T C

  Tarke did not want to waste any time, afraid the Crystal Ship would give up and leave, taking Rayne’s last hope with it. Scimarin’s acceleration was so powerful that the inertial compensators could not completely counteract it, and he was aware of a slight pressure pushing him back in his seat. While the ship was still accelerating, he rose and went to the cabin to sit beside Rayne and take her hands, leaning close.

  “Scrysalza has returned,” he murmured. “It’s going to help you. If anyone can, it’s the Ship. We have hope again.”

  The trip to Atlan took seven hours, and by the time he reached it, his escort was almost an hour behind. Still, the time was good. He had known the journey to take as long as ten hours. Space was smiling, as the old pioneers used to say. The fates had been kind, and he had fallen through a fold. Because of its speed, the ship started decelerating half an hour from Atlan, and the compensators could not completely eliminate the tug of false gravity. Such high-energy manoeuvres put a tremendous strain on the ship’s hull, and it made occasional pinging, twanging noises as he paced the short corridor between the bridge and the cabin.

  When at last the energy shell dispersed, he gazed at the immense, beautiful alien ship that hung in space near Atlan’s pearly orb, strobing the blackness with light. Whereas before he had looked upon it with dread, now hope fought to blossom in his sceptical heart as Scimarin drifted towards it. He had to cling to this last bit of hope; without it despair would claim him. He had made a lot of promises to Rayne while she slept, and he intended to keep them. Within moments the space line chimed, and Scimarin informed him that the Atlanteans were demanding to speak to him.

  He waved it away. “I’ve got nothing to say to them. If they don’t know why I’m here they’re stupider than I thought, and if they try to stop me they’ll be sorry.”

  Tarke willed the crystalline entity to send its beam of thought to probe his mind. He had lowered his mental shields, ready to welcome the alien’s enquiring touch and offer it the friendship for which he knew it searched. Scrysalza had been Rayne’s friend more than his, but he had touched the Crystal Ship’s mind too, and, although their encounter had been brief, he knew it intimately.

  “Come on, Scrysalza. Talk to me.” Tarke’s impatience grew as he waited for the searching beacon of thought.

  “What if this ship is not the same one?” Scimarin asked.

  “Then we’re all in a lot of trouble, because as far as I know, Scrysalza’s the only one that doesn’t have an Envoy anymore. But if this ship had an Envoy, it would be moving towards the planet.”

  “Perhaps this Envoy is using a different tactic.”

  He shook his head. “Scimarin, you’re not being very encouraging. Didn’t I programme any optimism into you?”

  “As little as you possess.”

  “Well, keep it to yourself.”

  Tarke sensed the beam of thought in the instant before it touched him, and welcomed it. It started to pass, hesitated, and lingered, sampling his thoughts. Evidently it liked what it found, or perhaps it recognised him, for the contact strengthened, probing the ship for other minds. He knew it had touched Rayne’s when it recoiled, and sensed its horror as it vanished.

  “No! Scrysalza!” he jumped up. “It’s Rayne! She needs your help, come back!” He thumped the console.

  “An Atlantean ship is moving closer,” Scimarin warned.

  “Then they’ll get a nasty surprise when my escort arrives.” He glared at the Crystal Ship. “It’s got to come back. It must! Come on, Scrysalza, think! Whose mind would be filled with such horror?”

  Tarke cursed, remembering the Ship’s gentle nature and its fear of suffering, which had made it the Envoy’s slave. He knew what it was to dread pain, and understood the Ship’s aversion to touching a mind that echoed with the Envoy’s power. It must have returned to find Rayne, however, so once it realised it had touched her mind, surely it would want to help, if it could? Unless it could not, he reminded himself, his hope dwindling with each passing minute. If that was the case, the Ship would leave. He willed it to remember her; to realise it could, and should, help the tiny creature who had helped it eight years ago.

  As Tarke stared at the alien entity that filled the screens with awesome brilliance, he became aware that the light from it was changing subtly. It no longer slashed aimlessly through space, but formed long streamers that reached towards his ship. The light brightened to form a bridge between them, creeping over Scimarin’s hull like ragged streamers of glowing mist.

  Brilliance engulfed him in a blinding flash, followed by a shock of absolute cold. He experienced a slipping, sinking sensation, as if space and time had opened and allowed him to fall through.

  The cold and light vanished, and he squinted and blinked as spots danced on his retinas. He sat on soft green moss in one of the ship’s gargantuan air chambers, surrounded by a bizarre landscape he remembered well. Rayne lay a few metres away, and he went over to check on her. He settled beside her and gazed at the weird growths that populated this fantasy land, the mist dewing his skin with moisture. Scrysalza’s breath moaned through distant tunnels and tubes, bringing strange scents into the chamber on the warm breezes that stirred the air.

  Tarke waited for the touch of the alien’s mind. It came after a few moments, at first a shy brush, imparting gentle greetings, which he returned. It flitted away and returned, a delicate thought filled with concern and sorrow.

  I came to speak to my friend, the ship thought, but she is not here anymore.

  Tarke closed his eyes and concentrated, aware that he had not been able to communicate with the ship as well as Rayne had. She’s here, he told it, but she’s ill. She needs your help.

  She is gone, the ship mourned, swallowed by the place where the Envoy once slept. His dark place is somewhere I have never dared to go. Why did she go there?

  Tarke bowed his head and told it how she had hidden there to keep his secret from his enemies.

  The ship sampled his mind again, exploring his memories and emotions with psychic probes, astonished and concerned by what it found. He hid nothing from it, fearing that if he did it would suspect duplicity. It shied away from his worst memories, sending its vast sympathy into him like a soothing salve.

  Help her, he begged. Heal her.

  Scrysalza hesitated, then said, I will try, but I make no promises. She has used the power of the Envoy to hide from your enemies, and it has overwhelmed her. Her mind is an open door, a sucking pit into which she has fallen. It all depends on how far she has gone, and whether she wants to return. When she flung open the Envoy’s doors, she must have known the danger. How many fell in there with her?

  Tarke answered, only one, as far as I know.

  Scrysalza gave a mental shudder and said, it is dangerous to touch her mind now, even for me.

  Tarke begged it to try, showing it the deep feelings he had for the girl in the hope that this would help to persuade it.

  Being an androgynous entity, Scrysalza had no concept of marriage. It used a budding system to reproduce, releasing millions of crystal seeds into space, only a few of which would grow into adults. Its nebula was thick with seeds, it said, and sent him an image of a vast drifting cloud of sparkling crystal flakes, like a diamond storm. His abandonment of Rayne after the Envoy’s defeat confused it, and it recalled the girl’s pain when he had.

  Tarke explained the whole story, and the ship absorbed it with rapt fascination. It found his life, culture and society strange and interesting, and longed to understand every detail of it. Tarke allowed it rummage through his memories, overcoming his powerful aversion to anyone prying into his mind. Nothing was too great a sacrifice, if it helped to bring Rayne back. The ship’s gentle intrusion filled him with panic that he quelled, assuring himself that no one would ever be able to plumb its thoughts. After a few minutes, Scrysalza declared that it understood him far better. It also found that the emotion he called love was akin to one the ships had, which sometimes made them want to
mesh wings with a particular friend and become one, something Envoys never allowed.

  Tarke sympathised, waiting for its next thought. When it remained silent, he asked it how it would try to heal Rayne. It replied that it would have to close the portals in her mind, which would require a great deal of effort and caution. Once the doors were shut, it would have to find the one that had swallowed her and bring her back, if possible. Her state, it explained, was the same as the Envoy had used when he became dormant, something they had perfected over the millennia to safeguard their sanity.

  The boredom of being anchored within another creature, unable to relate to the outside world except through his host’s senses, had caused Envoys to evolve this form of hibernation to escape the years of inactivity that came with their lifestyle. The only difference was that Rayne had lost control of it, and it had claimed her utterly. Tarke made his eagerness for the ship to begin its attempt to bring her back plain. It told him it might take a long time to undo the damage, if it could be undone at all. Tarke hoped his openness would convince the ship to try, sensing its reluctance still.

  Scrysalza gave a mental sigh and withdrew from his mind, which he guessed it did before it attempted to touch Rayne’s, to spare him the horror of it. Realising that he still wore his mask, which was growing clammy in the humidity, he stripped off his gloves and unclipped it, running a hand through his hair.

  He gazed down at Rayne. “Scrysalza’s going to try to help you. It’s going to close the doors and bring you back. Come back to me, please.”

  A tiny flame of hope burnt in his heart, sheltered from the bitter winds of doubt by his determination to keep it alive.

  Chapter Five

  Tarke waded out of the lake, stroking water from his hair after a refreshing bath. A week had passed since he had come aboard the Crystal Ship, a strange, but not unpleasant existence. He had grown tired of his clothes’ hot dampness and shed most of them for the sake of comfort. Now he wore only a pair of grey undershorts that reached to mid-thigh. The hardest part was providing Rayne’s needs, keeping her clean and fed. After the first day, he had shown the ship what he required, and it had provided the necessary nutrition, albeit in weird shapes and tastes.

  Caring for a comatose person was not easy at the best of times, and here it was a full-time job. Each day he gathered strange food from the little garden that had sprung up around them and tackled the unpleasant task of making her eat it. Scrysalza provided tubes of soft paste to feed her, but, even so, his dislike for forcing it down her throat had led to her losing weight, and he tried to do better.

  After she ate, he massaged her arms and legs and stretched her muscles, then carried her to the lake to bathe her. The daily routine forced him to overcome most of his aversion for skin to skin contact, and her comatose state made it easier. When she had fallen into the coma, his strange longing to hold her had increased, and over the past five years he had become inured to it. Touching others had never been a major problem for him, however, although he disliked it. The real problem would only rear its ugly head if and when she woke up.

  It had taken Scrysalza three days to close the first door in Rayne’s mind, and the entity had struggled to do it. Even the alien’s massive mental powers were barely strong enough to undo the damage the Envoy had caused, which the drugs had compounded and Rayne’s suicidal plunge into oblivion had complicated. The second door took another day, a third door took two, then the task became easier. After a week it had closed all the doors, which it also described as portals, holes, pits or spaces. These spaces, it claimed, were the source of the terrible blankness that had consumed Rayne’s mind, and were the scars the Envoy’s flaying intellect had left.

  Tarke knew the horror of her mind’s emptiness, which the ship described as absence. There was a subtle difference between a naturally empty space and one that was normally occupied. The sensation of howling vacancy he had experienced was the result of her mind’s lack of presence, and another’s mind could be pulled into the yawning abyss that longed to be filled. Tarke found this confusing until Scrysalza explained that the Envoy’s scars included a heightening of her natural empathy that sucked in the emotional presence of another, feeding on it as the Envoy had done.

  Envoys, confined to an existence of sensory and emotional deprivation, had evolved to enjoy the pain of others, their favourite sensation. During her battle with the Envoy, Rayne had been forced to mirror his weapons and turn them against him, reflecting his pleasure at her pain, which had poisoned him. That had caused her to burn new pathways in her brain, which she had become lost in when she had dragged her enemy down with her. Now Scrysalza had to find her dormant mind and bring it back into the familiar realm of awareness, a difficult task. It would be like bringing her to the surface of a black pool at whose bottom she had lain for five years.

  Two days later, Rayne coughed while Tarke was giving her water, and his heart leapt. He called her name, but she sank back into her quiet pool. The next day, she blinked when he lowered her into the lake to bathe her and flinched when he stroked her cheek, but once again she slipped away after a few minutes.

  Scrysalza claimed that it was like dragging a reluctant animal from its den. Rayne’s fear made her long to stay in the dark silence of her deepest lair, shunning the light of consciousness that held so many dangers. The following day, she flinched when he spoke her name and opened her eyes for a moment before sinking back into her coma. Tarke longed to send his mind in after her, but Scrysalza admonished him to be patient, for to rush such a delicate matter could do irreparable harm.

  For the next four days, Rayne had brief episodes of consciousness, each one a little longer than the last. During the fourth one, she stayed awake for several minutes, gazing into space, her eyes unfocussed. She flinched when he spoke and blinked when he stroked her face, but no awareness entered her eyes. The ship informed him that there was a distinct possibility that, even once awakened, she might never be the same again, perhaps damaged or insane. It continued to nudge her towards the light, however, like a mother whale raising her new-born calf to the air.

  Tarke lay beside Rayne and stroked her arm, willing her to awaken. He had lost count of the days now, but he had decided to remain here for as long as it took.

  Rayne opened her eyes and focussed on him, looking dazed. His heart pounded as a pang of joy and hope shot through him. He spent many hours each day either massaging her limbs or stroking her skin, for tactile sensation was important in the battle to bring her out of her dark place. He took hold of her arms and called her name, afraid she would slip away again. She gasped and flinched, her eyes roaming over his face. He smiled, but her eyes closed, and he patted her cheek to try to keep her awake, aware of the ship warning him to be gentle. He wanted to, but the prospect of losing her again, even for another day, was unbearable.

  “Rayne! Come on, stay with me. Don’t go, please. It’s all right. You’re safe. I’m safe. Snap out of it now. Rayne...”

  Her eyes opened again, and she swallowed, gazing at him with a puzzled expression. Tarke cupped her face, stroked her hair and called her name over and over again to try to hold her attention. Her eyes drifted closed again, as if she was immensely tired, and he pulled her into his arms, begging her to stay with him.

  Tarke’s heartfelt pleading confused Rayne, and she turned her head so her cheek was pressed to his. The last thing she remembered was confronting the telepath in her mind, and this seemed like a pleasant dream. It had to be a dream, for Tarke held her as if he would never let her go.

  Rayne did not want him to; he could do it until Hell froze over. She slipped her arms around him, and he held her away to study her. She smiled, and he grinned, revealing the even white teeth she had always suspected him of owning.

  “You’re awake.”

  Rayne nodded, fighting a creeping lethargy that threatened to wash over her. Her mouth tasted like she imagined a pigsty floor would, and she struggled to unglue her tongue from the roof of her mouth. S
he longed to ask him why he was so friendly, and why she was so weak. They appeared to be back on board the Crystal Ship. The gentle brush of the alien’s mind warmed her heart with a rush of joy.

  “Scrysssla,” she whispered, her tongue refusing to enunciate the difficult name.

  Tarke’s grin broadened. Dozens of questions crowded her mind, but for the moment her mouth was not working as it should, and she could only gaze at him in confusion. He answered her thoughts as if she had spoken.

  “We’re on board the Crystal Ship. It came back. You’ve been in a coma for five years, that’s why you’re so weak. Scrysalza brought you back. And I’m really glad you’re awake at last.”

  Rayne blinked, trying to remember what had happened, and how she had lost five years. Memories rushed back, filling her with dread as she recalled the doors opening and her fall into emptiness. The telepath’s scream as he was swept away into the darkness, then the closing of the blankness like a black fist. She sobbed as her eyes overflowed. Tarke murmured her name, begging her to stay while the ship’s mind soothed her with compassion.

  Between them, they held off the darkness, and she had no wish to return there when she could stay in her husband’s arms. Her aloof, paranoid husband, who now held her so tenderly. Eventually the tiredness claimed her, however, and she sank into its dark folds.

  Tarke lowered Rayne onto the moss, sending a concerned question to the ship.

  She sleeps, Scrysalza assured him. She is weak and in need of much rest now. Her mind will take time to recover, and adjust to the burdens of wakefulness and thoughts, so you may find her dull for a while. There is no permanent damage to her mind, and I have sealed the doors so she cannot slip back again.