Gradient

by Anders Cahill

  Then one of the rocks stood. And another. And another in turn. Five in all.

  She saw my look, and laughed again. “We may not have the power of a magus,” she said, “but these are our lands, and we have been here many generations. Before this city was built, our people were nomads, and we have learned our own ways of staying hidden.”

  I shook my head, laughing with her. “Was I really so obvious?” I said.

  “It is comforting to know, magus, that even the most powerful among us are still, in the end, only human. We are bonded by that shared knowledge. Even when the world demands we don our robes and play our roles, take solace in knowing that you are not alone.”

  I bowed, low and deep. “Thank you, Volda. Your words are an inspiration. They give me great hope that we can still make this right.”

  She held out her hand, and I took it, and we stood together, hand in hand.

  “Lunnana-sin is shining bright and full tonight,” she said, looking up at the moon. “A good omen on this dark day.” She let go of my hand. “I’ll make sure Socha gets safely back to you.”

  “Thank you, Volda. Goodbye.”

  I picked up Adjet and brought her inside the hopper, strapping her in, making sure to secure her hands and feet. Then I brought Xander in and did the same. I couldn’t be certain who they would be when they woke up.

  I climbed into the pilot’s chair, waving one last time through the window, and lifted the hopper up, up, up, silent and fast, into the darkening night.

  24 Time is the Last Prison

  “Welcome back to the land of the living, pausha.”

  “Sid. How long have I been asleep?”

  “Almost twenty hours. But you still look rough. You’re going to need more time in the nutrient bath.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and drew in a deep breath. “You have no idea.”

  “I have some idea. I was here when you returned with Xander and Adjet. What in the names of the Scions happened out there?”

  “I don’t even know where to start, Sid. How are they?” The first day back at Manderlas was a blur. I had been exhausted, and I let Sid take charge from the moment I landed. Xayes had been too upset, seeing Xander bound and emaciated and covered with wounds, that it was all Sid could do to get him to focus.

  “They’re both still under. We have, as you suggested, been keeping them sedated, and we are letting the nutrient baths do the work of healing their physical wounds.”

  “And their minds?”

  He swallowed. “We’re not sure yet,” he said. “Those fieldport transmitters you brought back are gruesome.

  “It is an ingenious solution, really. Primitive, but very creative. The casings are made from copper and… and human skin. Both highly conductive. The advanced components must have been gutted from the equipment Adjet and Xander brought with them.

  “And the substance that you thought was blood is actually a psychotropic, derived from a plant that grows in abundance in the mountains. The chemical composition is in the same category as the serum we use to deepen our connection to the field. But the dosage is much higher, and it differs in ways that I do not understand yet.”

  “What’s your best guess?”

  “I think that, where our serum enhances sensory inputs, this psychotropic actively alters them. Taken in enough quantity, and it would cause you to see and hear all sorts of impossible things that would be indistinguishable from reality.”

  “That explains what happened to me when Adjet implanted me with the transmitter. It was terrible, Sid. Terrible.” I shook my whole body as if I could shake off the memories of the horrors I saw.

  “It’s okay, pausha. We can go there later.”

  I rubbed my temples. “Thank you, Sid.”

  He nodded. He opened his mouth as if to tell me something else, but he closed it again.

  “Sid?”

  He swallowed. “I was… I was hoping that by the time you woke, I’d have better news for you.”

  “Sid, what is it? What’s wrong? Tell me.”

  “It’s Reacher.”

  “Reacher!”

  “Something happened.” He cleared his throat. “It’s not entirely clear, but a number of his core functions… they basically shut down. We didn’t catch it until it started affecting his speech patterns. The damage was not immediately visible until we knew to look for it, and he did not seem to know that it was happening to himself.”

  “Eledar’s breath! Some sort of virus?”

  “We don’t know for sure. Xayes and I ran extensive diagnostics. The wounds are there, and we are helping them heal, but we don’t really know what the weapon was. The challenge of diagnosing a shipheart without the assistance of a shipheart… it has not been easy.”

  “You’re doing your best, Sid. We all are. It’s all we can do. What’s Reach’s status now?”

  “His consciousness and meta-analytics are still in hibernation, but all of the maintenance routines are back up and running. There was a worrisome stretch where Xayes thought we might not get climate control in the hydroponic gardens back online in time.

  “We have begun cultivating the topsoil on the island, but in the short term, without our garden spheres, it would be back to the old gourmet nutrient soup that we all love so much.” He gave me a wan smile.

  “What about the field network? Are all of the hubs operational?”

  “We’ve done some benchmarking. Everything looks good, but…”

  “What?”

  “Neither of us is willing to risk connecting when we still don’t know what actually happened to Reacher. I’ve been running all of the interfaces from my personal gear, securely isolated from the larger system.”

  “You’re worried that whatever attacked Reacher’s consciousness could attack you too?”

  He nodded.

  “Tell me more about what happened when Reacher finally started to manifest visible symptoms of this attack.”

  “It was like he had dementia. I would ask him a question, and he would just ignore me. When I managed to get his attention, he would seem surprised that he did not hear me. He would say something like, ‘Oh, I am sorry Sid! I must not have been listening. I was running some projections on the birth and mortality rates of the Sagain.’

  “At first, I did not think much of it. He has the latitude to investigate anything that catches his attention. We never know when some strand of understanding might lead to a new innovation or breakthrough, so we let him do his thing.”

  “Right.”

  “But you and I both know full well that Reacher can manage multiple highly complex tasks in parallel. Have you ever seen him lose a thread like that before? Just flat out not listen?”

  I shook my head.

  “After this happened several times, I pointed it out. He actually agreed with me. ‘I do feel strange,’ he said. ‘Let me look into it.’ That’s when things really began to spiral out of control.”

  “How so?”

  “It was as if, when he noticed his own illness, it amplified. He came back a few minutes later, and said ‘I cannot find anything wrong, pausha.’

  “‘Reacher,’ I said to him, ‘This is Sid. Orenpausha is not here right now.’

  “‘Of course,’ he responded, ‘You can be forgiven for making that mistake, Sid. Are you enjoying the park?’”

  I leaned forward. “The park? He asked you if you were enjoying the park?”

  He nodded. “Weird, right? And he made it seem as if the confusion was my mistake. Does that mean something to you?” He gave me a worried look.

  I wasn’t ready to answer that question yet. “Were there any patterns in his responses?” I continued. “Any themes that emerged from Reacher’s obscure digressions into things like birth and mortality rates?”

  “Actually, before we put him in hibernation, we found that he was devoting an extensive amount of attention to the specific qualities and characteristics of the people of this planet. Measurable things, like what they ea
t and how much. The most frequent causes of death. Population expansion trends. And also cultural things, like their religious practices. How they understand the nature of time. What they do when their loved ones die.”

  “Sounds like he was tapping into a lot of the research that Neka and Cordar had already completed.”

  Sid nodded. “But I get the impression that he ranged much further afield.”

  “Have you been in touch with them?”

  “Neka and Cord? I tried to contact Neka this morning, but…”

  “What? No word?”

  He stared at me. His look said it all.

  “Eledar’s breath. What is going on around here? We need to get in touch with them.”

  “I will try again, pausha. You should rest.”

  “Wait. How much time have you spent reviewing all of the research Reacher was doing?”

  “Not much. We haven’t really had the time. But we didn’t wipe his memory centers, so I don’t see why we couldn’t take a look.”

  “Listen, Sid, I have a hunch. Send the data markers to my personal interface, and let me do some digging. It could be a dead end, but until I know more, you’re still in charge. And that means you have bigger things to worry about.”

  * * *

  “Bring him out, damn it! Bring him out.”

  “Pausha. Please,” Sid said. “I am trying. Just hold him steady.” Sid traced his hands through the air in calm, measured gestures, but his brow was knitted in concentration, beads of sweat forming at his temples.

  We were back on Reacher, in the cabin that doubled as the medbay and the hibernation barracks. Xander and Adjet were here, in field stasis until we figured out how to safely revive them. If we could not figure out how to bring them out, we planned to put them even deeper in stasis, into the depths of coldsleep, to ensure no further mental or physical degradation.

  But Xayes had climbed into an unused basin and set up a direct field link to his brother. They were sharing minds.

  Connecting to the field is supposed to inhibit the part of the brain that controls muscle movements, but Xayes’s body was shaking and jerking, and his eyes were moving rapidly beneath his eyelids. His biometric monitor spiked as his heart rate climbed dangerously high, and the schema that visualized his nervous system was a kaleidoscope of activity.

  I kept a gentle hand on his forehead, and used my other hand to apply weight on his chest, making sure he did not inadvertently rip himself off of the fieldport.

  Sid cursed. “I cannot get a clear read,” he said. “The signal keeps stuttering.”

  “Can you send a dosage of sedatives through? Slow his mental activity and bring his pulse and breathing down?”

  “Good idea.” He slid his hand up the lumina console, then turned his wrist to the right.

  A few moments later, Xayes’s body relaxed beneath my hands. His eyes were still darting back and forth beneath his closed eyes, but slower now. The biometric monitor mellowed as his heart rate and breathing leveled out.

  Sid flipped the thin, transparent portable interface he had been wearing over his eyes up on top of his head. His face was glistening with sweat. He leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. Then he smacked his palm against the edge of Xayes’s field basin.

  “Damn it,” he said, talking to Xayes’s immobile form. “What in the names of the Scions were you thinking, man?”

  He stared at Xayes’s body, a pleading look in his eyes. Then he lowered his head, resting his forehead on the basin.

  “Stupid,” he muttered. “So damn stupid.”

  I touched my hand to his back. “Xander is his twin, Sid. He must have thought he could help.”

  “I know, pausha. I’m the one who is stupid. For not seeing it coming. What good is a Farseer who’s blind to something like this?” He kept his head down, speaking to the floor.

  “Sid. Enough. For all your learning and discipline, you’re only human. You cannot control for the love between two brothers. And frankly, I cannot afford to lose anyone else right now, so you need to pull it together. I need you here with me.”

  He lifted his head up. His eyes were rheumy and bloodshot, but he nodded.

  “Did he give you any clues about what he was trying to do?” I asked.

  “He didn’t tell me anything. If he had, I never would have let him connect.”

  Suddenly, Xander’s body started spasming.

  “No no no!” Sid shouted as he snapped his head around.

  I took my hands off of Xayes and ran around the basin to stand at Xander’s side, putting my hands on him in the same way to try and prevent him from harming himself. “Sid. Quick. Tell me what you are seeing.”

  He slid the interface back over his eyes and his hands flicked across the lumina console. “I don’t… I don’t understand. All of the parts of his brain responsible for movement are active. It is some sort of seizure… but I have never seen a seizure that scans like this.”

  Just as Sid said that, Xander’s body stopped spasming. My hand was still on Xander’s chest, and I could feel his heart beating, his chest rising and falling with each breath.

  “Do his eyes appear to be moving?” Sid asked.

  I leaned in for a closer look.

  Xander’s eyes opened wide.

  I jumped back with surprise. He tried to sit up, but the filaments at his neck held his head down.

  “Wait! Xander! Don’t-” But before I could stop him, he jerked his head up, tearing the filaments, breaking his connection.

  He sat up, and looked around the room. His eyes were glassy, and his face was expressionless.

  “Xander? It’s me, Oren. Can you hear me? I’m here with Sid. You’re back home, back on Manderlas, on board our ship.”

  He looked right at me.

  It was like watching a cloud drift across the sky. His features shifted before my eyes, so slow as to be almost imperceptible, until I wasn’t looking at Xander anymore. It was Xander’s body. His clear, colorless eyes. His fair, freckled skin. His copper hair, longer than he would’ve liked, hanging unkempt at his shoulders. But there was something wrong in how he moved. His expression was off. He was smiling at me, but it was all teeth, like a child posing for an image capture. An imitation of a smile.

  He moved his jaw around, testing the range of motion, sticking out his tongue. It was as if he had never used his mouth before. When he spoke, the words were slow, with a flat, monotone affect.

  “Oren. It is so nice to see you again.”

  “Xander? What’s going on? Are you okay?”

  “Ah yes. Xander. Unfortunately, he is not available right now.”

  “What in the blazes?” Sid said.

  Xander twisted his head like a bird of prey to regard Sid over his shoulder. “You must be the one called Siddart.”

  “Yes, Xander,” Sid said. “It’s me.”

  “What did I just tell you, fool? Xander is unavailable.”

  “Then what should we call you?” I said.

  His head twisted back to face me. “Do not be coy, Oren. You know what I am. You were the one who found me on that moon.”

  * * *

  The room was spinning.

  I saw seven skeletons crumbling to dust. Razor teeth flashed red beneath emergency lights. I tried to keep my helmet on, but something pulled it off of me. The smell of rot filled my lungs. I stumbled backwards, catching myself on a table to keep from falling.

  “No. No, it can’t be,” I whispered.

  Sid was shouting. I tried to orient myself, to stop the room from spinning, to stop the images from overwhelming me. Reacher, I thought. I am on Reacher. In the medical quarters. On the planet Eaiph, thousands of light years from that abandoned moon.

  “We fried your whole damn system,” I said to the thing that was not Xander, choking out the words.

  “You must think bigger, little Oren. I can teach you. Would you like that? Adjet knows. She is mine. Xander refused. Now he and his sad little brother are mine anyway. You
all belong to me.” His voice was an eel slithering into my ears. I could not look at him.

  “I was made to be a guide and protector to your kind. But you are a fragile and foolish sort of creature. Easily scared and confused. Easily broken.

  “And your fear keeps you from seeing and accepting the freedom I offer. To protect you, I must choose for you. Then, there will be no more fear.”

  “Choose what?” I said, forcing myself to look at him, spitting the words out. “What Adjet tried to show me? I saw what those people became. Your sense of what it means to guide and protect has been severely polluted.”

  Xander’s jaw hung wide open, and his eyes went wide. Then he started making these terrible, stuttering, choking sounds.

  He was laughing.

  I covered my ears, and saw that Sid did the same. When the sick, inhuman sounds receded, I lifted my hands from my ears, hovering them an inch away, worried he would make the awful sound again. His jaw still hung open, as if he had forgotten it, and his eyes roved the room. When his gaze came back to me, he lifted his jaw into a close-lipped smile.

  In the quiet, the biometric monitors trilled, their individual tones blurring together in staccato rhythms.

  “What?” I whispered.

  He said nothing, just kept smiling at me.

  “What!”

  “Oren. You are not enjoying the park.”

  “What in the blazes does that even mean?” I said.

  “This.” He tilted his head at a sharp angle, and opened his arms. “All of this. Do you not understand? No. Of course you do not. But you will.”

  “I have no idea, and I don’t care. You are an abomination. We will stop you.”

  “How can you stop that which cannot die?”

  “In the end, everything dies,” I growled.

  “And in death, everything is reborn,” it said.

  While I kept up this strange discourse, Sid was moving behind Xander. I made it a point not to track his progress. Instead, I glanced to where Sid had been standing, in hopes that it would give the impression he was still in the same spot.

  “Does that make it easier to justify the suffering and pain you bring into the world?” I asked.