Empire of Dust

by Jacey Bedford

  She spoke directly to Lorient, all her senses open to his every feeling.

  His eyes darted from her to Ben and back again. Lorient’s face went from beet red to ghostly pale.

  “I . . . Call it rebellious youth. I wanted to show my father he was wrong. It split the family in two. And he wasn’t wrong. When the damn thing was installed, I found . . . I could control people.”

  “You were a broadcasting Empath?” Cara breathed.

  “More than that. I didn’t just make suggestions or transmit my feelings. I said do something, and they did it. Have you any idea just how that makes a man feel . . . the power . . . ?” He shook his head. “I was terrified. Terrified and exhilarated and joyous, but . . . no one should have that kind of power.”

  Cara could think of many who would leap at the opportunity. All credit to the man that he hadn’t.

  “What did you do?” Ben asked quietly.

  “They tried to persuade me I was special, that they’d look after me, but, you know the kind of looking after they had in mind. Keep me in a facility until there was a need for my talents, then bring me out, turn me loose to persuade someone to their way of thinking, and then stuff me back in my box.” His mouth set in a stubborn line. “I had them deactivate the thing and take out what they could. I knew the risks, but I’d rather die than have that kind of power over people. I didn’t die. After rehab, I went back to my family and begged their forgiveness. That’s how I know the depth of evil embedded within each implant. Only a sinner can know the true depth of sin. I threw myself into serving the Ecolibrian movement. Tried to tell myself I could be normal again. I guess I was looking for redemption.”

  “But it’s still there, isn’t it? Most people just call it charisma.”

  “It’s not the same. Not as strong. I can ignore it, mostly. I don’t connect with it. I’d never use it for personal gain.”

  “No one is suggesting that you do,” Ben said.

  “Danny inherited it, didn’t he? Natural psi? I infected him.” Victor Lorient put both hands to his face. “May I be forgiven.”

  “Danny was a wonder,” Cara said. “There wasn’t anyone on this planet—psi-tech or settler alike—who didn’t feel better after meeting Danny. He radiated goodwill to everyone, because that’s what was in his heart, but your actions didn’t infect him with psi ability. That’s not the way it works. Believe me. If Danny had any innate talent, it was genetics alone and nothing to do with your implant.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Director Lorient . . .” Ben stepped forward.

  “Get away from me!”

  Cara caught Ben’s look of helplessness. *Let me try. You’re too much of a threat.* She used a very tight thought that bypassed Lorient.

  “Director Lorient.” Her light touch on his forearm snapped him ramrod-straight and he stared at her, wide eyed. “Honestly, you didn’t infect Danny.”

  He just shook his head, and Cara didn’t know whether she could overturn the beliefs of more than half a lifetime.

  “What now?” Lorient said. “Discredit me in front of all of them?”

  The crowd was louder than before.

  “What good would that do?” Ben stepped forward. “Listen. Your people are getting angry. They want you.” He paused. “Calm them down. Prepare them for what’s to come. Your secret’s safe with us.”

  “Please, Director Lorient, otherwise people are going to get hurt,” Cara said.

  “Blackmail.” Lorient’s face was an emotionless mask. He knew he’d lost this battle, but he was covering it up well.

  “Negotiation,” Ben said.

  “Director, Commander Benjamin. Please come, now!” Jack called to them.

  Lorient stepped forward and Ben followed him.

  “Psi-tech-bas-tards. Psi-tech-bas-tards.” The crowd had started to chant.

  Gupta’s security guards stood shoulder to shoulder, facing down the crowd.

  “Please.” Victor Lorient stepped forward. “Please, calm down and listen very carefully.”

  Cara felt all his powerful charm come on line. Implant or charisma, it made no difference. The crowd would do whatever he said. They had a breathing space. She hoped it was long enough to let Ben get the information they needed from Crowder.

  • • •

  Standing in the hangar with Ben as Max said his good-byes to Gen and stowed his small bag on board the Dixie, Cara wanted to scream: Don’t leave me, but instead she just hugged Ben briefly.

  “I’ll call you twice a day, on schedule.”

  *There’s a storm coming in. Eastern Seaboard Station gives about eight minutes’ clearance.* Cas Ritson’s message cut across their good-bye.

  “Ah, that’s it. Summer’s over. Olyanda’s trying to kill us again. You’d better get off before you lose your window.”

  “Storm . . .”

  “We’ll manage. Can the autumn be any worse than the spring?”

  “I . . .”

  “Go.”

  “Love you.”

  “I know.”

  She reached up and their lips connected one last time. Then he was out of her arms and into the Dixie, closing the hatch with a soft, reassuring click.

  She stood in the shelter of the hangar doors as the little machine lifted on antigravs and rolled out onto the pad. It soared upward and dwindled to a bright star in the daylight sky. Moments later the first icy blast of an autumn storm sent her reeling into the doorframe as dark green-gray clouds roiled in. This one was going to be a doozy.

  Chapter Thirty

  JOURNEY

  Ben’s connection to Cara stretched tight, then tighter still like a piece of elastic under too much strain. He wanted to let go and twang back to Olyanda to be with her again, but duty and grim determination drove him on.

  Two days to the Invidii Gate and nothing to do but chew over the situation. Crowder, van Blaiden, platinum. Max was no help—he was mooning over Gen when he wasn’t throwing up in quarter-G.

  Cara’s first call was brief. The storm was still raging overhead, pinning everyone down in bunkers, caves, and storm cellars. By their second contact it had abated and flared up again.

  *I should have stayed.*

  *Good job you didn’t stay.*

  They both spoke together, then laughed.

  *We’re managing, Ben. No one was caught in the open. You just do what you set out to do.*

  A day later the storm on Olyanda had blown itself out completely, and life was returning to normal. He mentally kissed Cara good-bye as he prepared for the jump into foldspace. By the time he emerged at the other end, the distance would be enough to limit them to brief, essential communications.

  “Can I do anything?” Max asked.

  “You ever flown a Dixie before?”

  Max shook his head. “I feel like a spare part.”

  Ben refrained from saying that he was.

  “I want to help. You left Cara behind in order to get me off Olyanda safely.”

  “It seemed to make sense at the time.”

  “Thank you. I’m not sure, if our situations had been reversed, that I’d have abandoned Gen to save you. I miss her so much already. You . . . you can talk to Cara?”

  “She can talk to me. I’m not much of a Telepath.”

  “What’s it like, having someone in your head?”

  “Depends who it is, but . . . well, there are protocols for that sort of thing. You learn them early and you learn them fast, but most of us already knew we had some kind of latent talent before we got tested.”

  “I was never tested.”

  “Never? How did you manage that?”

  “A series of foster homes, all Ecolibrian. I moved around a lot. I wasn’t always the easiest kid. I guess I fell through the cracks, and, of course, none of my various foster parents hurried to volunteer me.”

  “Did you want to avoid testing?”

  “I wanted to avoid any kind of authority when I was twelve, didn’t you?”

 
; “I probably had it easier than you.” Ben recalled his teenage years. “My gran brought me and my brother up, and she was a psi-tech herself, a diplomat for the Five Power Alliance before our parents died, so testing was just something you did. My brother tested positive but refused an implant. He stayed on the farm, which was all he ever wanted. I won a place at the academy on Chenon and later spent a couple of years training on Earth after signing up with the Monitors.”

  “If I wanted to have a receiving implant, could I get one at my age, or do you have to be fitted with them when you’re young? I’d like to be able to have Gen talk to me.”

  “It’s never too late, but they’re expensive, and you’d have to learn how to use it. The older you are, the more difficult it is to adjust, but if you’re determined . . .”

  Max nodded. “I am.”

  “Then talk to Mother Ramona when we get to Crossways. In the meantime, we’ll reach the Invidii Gate in three hours. Better get some sleep beforehand because you sure as hell won’t get any in the Folds.”

  “What about you? Don’t you need sleep?”

  “I’m okay. I’m used to this. I catnap when I can.”

  “You mean I’m flying with a pilot who sleeps on the job?”

  “Not in foldspace—as for the rest of it, relax. There’s an onboard computer.”

  “Machines.”

  “Don’t trust ’em?”

  “I don’t know what to trust, and that’s a fact!”

  Ben could empathize with that.

  Max let his head roll back, and for a while Ben thought he was sleeping, but at length he opened his eyes again. “Ben?”

  “Yes?” Ben looked up from his screen.

  “The Folds.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve heard that they can do strange things to your mind. Is that a psi-tech thing or . . .”

  “Or will it affect you, too; is that what you mean?”

  “I guess.”

  “It affects everybody—or at least it’s affected everybody I’ve ever flown with, psi-tech or de . . .”

  “Deadhead. It’s okay; you can say it. I’ve heard it often enough before.”

  “Sorry.”

  “But the Folds . . .”

  “I don’t know what’s out there. It’s never the same twice. Everyone sees something different, and you have to keep on telling yourself it’s not real, except sometimes it is, and that’s when you’re in deep shit.”

  “But the gates are safe, right?”

  “Mostly, the bigger gates are, but they take longer and we haven’t got that luxury. We’re going through the Invidii Gate because it’s smaller, faster, and less well monitored. It’s normally only used for unmanned freightpods. You can’t send the big passenger ships or cargo hulks through. They pull too much mass and . . .”

  “And they’re too valuable.” Max felt a cold weight settle in his stomach.

  “Right.”

  “But you’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, or gates like this. Never this particular one.”

  “Oh, great!”

  “Don’t worry. It’s a gamble, but the odds are good.”

  Max unclipped his harness and sat upright. “How many ships disappear?”

  “You don’t want to know. Even one ship that doesn’t make it is one too many.”

  “Do you believe in anything? I mean, a god or anything like that?”

  “God? No. And I thought Ecolibrians didn’t believe in a supreme being either, just the oneness of nature; what they used to call the Gaia Theory before the Ecos made a quasi-religion out of it.”

  “We believe that when you die, your atoms are reabsorbed into nature to start at the bottom of the food chain again only, well, in space that wouldn’t happen, would it?”

  “Maybe. Eventually. We’re all made of star stuff. Look, theology isn’t my strong point, Max. I guess I’m pretty simple in the philosophy department. You do the best you can with what you’ve got and try to go through life in such a way that you leave people better off than they would have been if you hadn’t been there. Sometimes you can do that in big ways, sometimes in small ones.”

  “And if that puts you in the firing line?”

  “You have to decide whether something’s worth fighting for, or even whether it’s your fight.”

  “And is Olyanda your fight?”

  “I guess. I’d rather it wasn’t, but there’s no one else. That makes it mine.”

  “You could have walked away—or flown away—and taken Cara with you.”

  Ben made a course correction and didn’t reply for nearly a minute. Then, at length, he said, “Don’t think I didn’t consider that.”

  “You’re a hero, Benjamin. I guess I’m not.”

  Crowder had sometimes accused him of being a white knight, but no one had ever accused him of being a hero. He’d always associated heroism with a particular brand of gung-ho stupidity. All he was doing was what his conscience wouldn’t let him leave undone.

  “Hardly.” He shrugged. “We’ll be entering the Folds in ten minutes. If this is your first time, you should make use of the head before we get there. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Max eased himself out of the couch and to the cubbyhole that passed for sanitary facilities on the flyer. They’d not wasted much space on it, but it was effective. He peed, hearing the recycler kick in.

  He strapped in to his couch again. “Is it really that bad?”

  “Buckle up tight.” Ben leaned over and locked Max’s harness.

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “Because I don’t want you getting up and throwing yourself around the cabin trying to fight off some hobgoblin from your nightmares. Just keep telling yourself they’re not real.”

  “And if they are?”

  “Tell yourself they’re not.”

  Max took a deep breath. “If you’re trying to scare me, you’re succeeding.”

  “Good. Just remember, if any of those hobgoblins turn out to be Gen-shaped, they’re definitely not real.”

  Max nodded.

  “Right. One minute.” Ben’s hand moved over the control panel, and the shield opened to reveal myriad stars beyond the thick, radiation-proof plasglas.

  “Oh, gods, it’s . . .” Max stared.

  Of course, his first time in space, conscious anyway.

  “Beautiful,” Ben said. “Terrifying.”

  “Both.”

  “That bright star isn’t a star at all. It’s the Invidii Gate beacon.”

  As they neared, the brightness resolved itself into two silver disks, hanging in space. Between them, a deep black void waited.

  “Here we go.” Ben cut power to the computer and took over the helm.

  “I thought you said you used the computer?”

  “Not in the Folds—it can get as confused as a human.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m a Navigator. This is what I do, find my way through uncharted territories. Don’t worry, I’ll not be catnapping.”

  The black void grew and grew until it filled the viewport.

  “It’s not so ba . . .” Max’s voice cut off abruptly into an incoherent gurgle.

  “Niagara Falls in a barrel,” Ben said through gritted teeth.

  • • •

  Shapes and faces swim in the blackness outside the Dixie and inside, too, though here the blackness is less tangible, more like it’s in Ben’s head. People he’s known, distorted out of all proportion like some bizarre surrealist painting. They loom and fade, loom and fade. His grandmother, ex-wife, brother, school bully, Lorient, Crowder, faces of comrades lost on Hera-3.

  Strange wyrm-like shapes swirl through the little craft, entering through the skin of the Dixie, taking a good look around and exiting the same way, as if nothing is solid. None of them is as big as the void dragon he saw last time, though they could be its baby cousins. If the fold-creatures were from his imagination, he had a really good imagination, inventing det
ail down to their yellow, reptilian eyes and the prehensile claws on the fronds attached to their lower lips like deadly beards.

  He adjusts the Dixie’s course, feeling as though there’s nothing between him and the vast deep. His fingers connect with something cold and slimy. He turns and sees Max, or his remains, half decayed, lolling in his harness. He jumps, but his own harness holds him strapped firmly to the couch. Then the corpse grows flesh, sits up, and pukes.

  It’s not real. It’s not real. Please let that not be real.

  But Cara is real. She’s outside in the void of space, naked and smiling. No, that definitely isn’t real. Not outside the flyer. Then she’s inside, still naked, but this time not smiling. Her face is suffused with pure lust and she’s all over Ben, no longer a corpse, but alive and . . .

  Max yells out. Ben wonders whether he’s seen the same images, but it’s no matter.

  It’s not real. It’s not real.

  Then, with a whoosh and a pop, it’s over.

  • • •

  He shook Max’s arm. “It’s over. Wake up.”

  “What? I . . . Get off her . . .” Max’s eyes were slightly unfocused. He took a swing at Ben, but Ben dodged easily.

  “Is this real?” Max asked, intelligence returning.

  “If I said it was, would you believe me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well it is, and you only threw up once. Well done.”

  “I threw up? Sorry.” He looked around but could find no evidence.

  Ben laughed. “Only once. Or maybe you didn’t. That’s good going. Here, drink this.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Sorry, water.”

  Max took it. “So what kind of demons did you meet in the Folds?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  The jump through the Invidii Gate landed them one day away from Crossways. Ben tried to prepare Max.

  “Crossways is a dangerous place,” he said. “Watch your back and watch mine, too.”