by S. L. Viehl
If I destroyed the Odnallak, I discovered, the Jxin would never ascend. Without the existence of the Odnallak to drive them toward perfecting themselves, their civilization would continue peacefully for several thousand years and then it would simply die out of existence. Maggie’s species had never fully appreciated the one thing the existence of the Odnallak among them had bestowed: the Jxin’s desire to better themselves. Now because they had not evolved, they would never begin life on other worlds. But the universe had a way of correcting things, and the DNA left behind by the extinct Jxin would be blasted into space by an asteroid collision, where it would crystallize, spread to other worlds. Several million years after the Jxin died out, another species would rise to take their place, evolve, weed out their undesirables, and seek perfection. And the cycle of the black crystal would be repeated again.
If I did nothing, the black crystal would remain in existence, and the same timeline would play out. I called it up to see if any life escaped the scourge of the Odnallak’s final weapon of vengeance. Joren and oKia did not escape, and once the black crystal wiped out all life, it began attacking stars, devouring them until it eradicated all light and all possibility of life in the universe.
Maggie had said I would have to make a choice, but there was no choice, except . . .
I called up one last potential timeline.
Once I had found the solution, I collected the last of the black crystal Joseph had brought back from my future, placing it in the specimen container he had discarded and sealing it.
“Cherijo.”
Nineteen
I had forgotten about Reever and Shon, and stepped out of the time matrix to see the settlers imprisoned in crystal, and Shon lying unconscious on the ground.
My husband stared at my hair. “What has happened to you?”
I glanced at my reflection in one of the crystal shafts. My hair had turned completely silver, as had my eyes. “I’ve been changed again. This will be the last time.”
He followed me back into the matrix. “Did Joseph do this to you?”
“Joseph, and Maggie. They’re both gone now.” I set the container aside and focused on reviewing the time constructs I’d called up. “I’ve found a cure for the black crystal.”
“You told me that there is no cure.”
“Not now, there isn’t.” I scanned the images, looking for the precise time sequence I needed, the moment when the Jxin and the Odnallak had separated as a species. I found it further along in the timeline than I’d imagined. “I’m going to make one. Step back from that archway, Duncan; I need that.”
“You can control the crystal now.”
“That’s one way to put it.” He had a gift for understatement, but his mind couldn’t grasp what mine had attained in the last hour. I felt a little sorry for him. “It’s all right. This will only take another minute or two.”
I sent power into the archway, manipulating the time and space within its boundaries until it formed a small conduit. I could have made it much larger—big enough to swallow a fleet of ships—but for my purposes it didn’t need to be big.
My final adjustment was to activate the energy well within the archway, and I stepped back as the portal began to open.
“What are you doing?”
“My last surgery.” I sealed off the portal from the rest of the matrix—leaving it open would have sucked me and Reever into the portal—and returned to the crystal panels. “Bring me that container over there, will you?”
Reever picked up the black crystal I had collected. “Why do you need this?”
“Don’t worry.” I had to walk over and take the container from him. “I’m destroying it and the rest of the black crystal.”
“As you said, the crystal cannot be destroyed.”
“Not in the conventional sense, no.” I lifted it up and looked at the angry, glittering contents. Now that I was immune to the effects, I could see the dark, ugly beauty of it. “But when I’m done, it will be destroyed, and there won’t be a single trace of it anywhere in the universe.”
Reever eyed the portal. “You cannot send it to an alternative dimension.”
“Seeing how it can jump dimensions, that would be an exercise in supreme futility. What I’m going to do is give the black crystal exactly what it was designed to kill. The Jxin.”
“Cherijo.”
“And the Odnallak, too.” I almost had enough power channeled to stabilize my tiny time rift. “I’m sending it to the moment in time when the Jxin still had bodies, and undesirables, and all the other little grubby problems that spoiled things for the ascension. The black crystal will infect them. They won’t evolve. They won’t discard the undesirables. And they damn well won’t ascend.”
“It will wipe out their species.”
“Both species, to be exact. By the time it’s finished, there won’t be a single trace of their DNA left. At which point, the black crystal will cease to exist.” I set down the container. “Say bye-bye to the Jxin, the Odnallak, and everything they’ve done to wreck our timeline.”
“You cannot do this,” he said at once.
I eyed him. “It’s already done. I just have to send the crystal through.”
“If you infect the Jxin and destroy their DNA, they will never become the founding race. Millions of species will be lost.”
“Life will evolve again; it always does.” I shrugged. “Only this time it won’t be polluted by the Jxin or the Odnallak. It will be something different. Something new. Something that will not continue the cycle.”
“You will kill everyone we know. Everyone we have tried to protect.” He grabbed my wrist. “Cherijo, stop this.”
“If I don’t send it back, the crystal will destroy all life anyway,” I reminded him mildly. “And it will prevent any new life from evolving. This construct is the only way that sentient life has a chance.”
He wouldn’t let go. “There has to be another option.”
I felt the frantic energy that had kept me going slowly draining out of me. “I’ve run thousands of time simulations through the matrix. Every other construct ends with the advent of the black crystal. Nothing survives it but me. It has to be destroyed, Duncan.”
He frowned. “Why do you survive?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “According to the time constructs I’ve run, no matter what happens, I am the only thing in the universe that never dies.”
“So you would do this and condemn yourself to an eternity of solitude?”
That was the part I didn’t want to think about. “It’s the price tag, Duncan. Someone has to pay. I’d rather it be me.” I tried to smile. “When it’s done, I’m going to give myself to the protocrystal. It won’t kill me, but it should keep me company while we wait for new life to evolve. Should only take a couple of billion years.”
He let go of me and backed away. “I understand now.” He looked blindly at the images flashing around us. “I was wrong.”
“It won’t hurt,” I promised. “Not you or anyone else. You’ll just stop existing.”
“I was wrong about Jarn,” he said.
“I don’t want to talk about her.” I turned away. “Would you leave now? I really don’t want to watch you disappear.”
“Why will you not be affected by the shift in the timeline, Cherijo?”
“I don’t know.” And I didn’t care. “The matrix can’t confide in me. It can only show me what will happen. Maybe Joseph did a better job cloning himself than he thought he did.”
“It wasn’t only Joseph,” he said softly. “Maggie also gave you her DNA.”
“She meant well, I suppose.” I didn’t want to think about my surrogate mother anymore. “Reever, I have all the time in the world here, but the rest of the existence doesn’t. Let me do this. Let me end this.”
“But you will not end. You will never die.” He came to the console and took my hand. “Because you are not Odnallak or Jxin. You are both. You are neither.”
“Whatever.”
“Listen to me, Wife.” He pressed my hand between his. “You are Jxin, but you chose not to ascend. You are Odnallak, but you chose not to harm. No crystal can kill you. The Jxin cannot control you, and neither can the Odnallak. You became Jarn, and Jarn became you. You are the paradox, Cherijo. The one true paradox in all of this. Why is that, do you think?”
“Shut up.” I pulled away from him and accessed the control grid. I channeled the power grid into the matrix, and opened the portal.
“Squilyp told you there was no Jarn. I am telling you there is no Jarn. The woman who Joseph brought here was you. There is only you. It is the same with them. In you, there is no Jxin, no Odnallak. You are neither and both. You are their child, beloved. Their only child. The beginning and the end. The path changes, Cherijo. So, too, must the traveler.”
“I have to stop them,” I shouted.
“No.” He swept me up into his arms. “You have to do what you were created to do. You have to save them.”
Reever carried me to the portal, and jumped through.
Light streamed around us, and then I stood in the center of a field, surrounded by Jxin. Reever lay at my feet, unconscious. I didn’t see any familiar faces this time, but their expressions ranged from stunned to frightened.
Jxin with normal emotions, dressed in ordinary garments, gathered closer. Beyond them I could see a city, one that was much more advanced than the primitive settlement of the past, but not yet the metropolis of the crystal towers and mind-boggling technology.
“Are you injured?” I heard one of the men ask.
“I don’t think so.” I crouched down to check my husband. His pulse and respiration were normal, and after a few moments he opened his eyes. “That was unbelievably stupid.”
He smiled up at me. “I know.”
I looked up at the now-worried faces of my ancient ancestors. “My name is Cherijo Grey Veil, and this is my husband, Duncan Reever. We came here from the future.”
It took them a minute or two to digest this. Finally one of the women asked, “Why?”
“To talk to you.” Reever wasn’t the only one who could make a crazy leap. “To save you.”
It took a lot of talking. Several weeks of it, in fact, that I spent answering questions and mapping out timelines and submitting to medical examinations. The Jxin were nothing if not skeptical.
Fortunately they were also advanced enough in this era to grasp what Reever and I told them, and civilized enough to be horrified by their imminent future.
“It has always been the dream of our people to explore space, and colonize other worlds,” one of their leaders, an older male known as an Elder, admitted. “But we have no wish to abandon our world or our bodies in order to evolve. And yet you say our descendants will do this.”
“If you go on as you are, they will. The means by which they do it are the problem.” I sighed and rubbed my forehead. “The Jxin must evolve into the founding race of the future. But it has to be all of the Jxin, not just the genetically perfect.”
“How can we stop our descendants from causing this division?”
“Celebrate your diversity,” Reever suggested. “Seek balance instead of perfection.”
“We could outlaw bioengineering,” one of the council members said.
“That might stop your people from tampering with your genetic future for a few generations, but eventually they’ll forget why it had to be outlawed.”
“Not if they preserve the records of our visit to this time,” Reever said. “Etched in crystal, they will last forever. Then you only have to pass them and the warning we have given you to each new generation.”
“If we do this,” their leader said, “the future will be changed. Your timeline will be altered.” He looked at me. “If there is no division among our descendants, you . . .”
I knew what he didn’t want to say. “Reever may never be born, and I’ll probably never be created. We know.”
He looked shaken. “You would give your lives for an unknown future?”
I leaned forward. “Billions of generations are depending on it. The future of the universe. So tell me, Elder, wouldn’t you?”
The portal remained stable throughout the length of our sojourn, and once we had convinced the Jxin to alter their future, Reever and I had one last decision to make.
“We can remain here for as long as our timeline remains cohesive,” he said to me as we walked out to the portal. “It will be several generations before the changes affect it.”
“As much as I like them, I’d rather go back to our own time.” I looked into the shimmering depths of the rift. “Marel could still be waiting for us on the other side. Or maybe we’ll go to wherever she is.”
“I love you, Waenara.”
“I know, Osepeke.”
We said our good-byes, and then held hands and walked into the light.
Twenty
I could end my story here. All things considered, I probably should. But while no one may ever believe what I’ve written in these journals, I think the truth is worth the risk.
Time lost all meaning as we traveled through the portal, but I wasn’t scared. I had no idea what would happen to us, but Reever was with me. On some level I knew we weren’t going back to our future; I could sense the enormous shifts in the time and reality taking place just beyond the portal. Whatever lay on the other side, I wouldn’t face it alone.
We emerged not into my crystal matrix on Jxin, and not in the blackness of oblivion, but in a field of yiborra grass. As the portal vanished behind us, I looked into the docile, mildly curious eyes of a t’lerue.
“Hello, bovine,” I said, holding out my hand for it to sniff before I gave it a gentle pat. Some of my tousled hair fell over my cheek and I began to push it back, and then stared at it. It was no longer silver, but had changed back to black with a silver sheen.
“Your eyes are dark blue again,” Reever said.
“Good. I never liked silver that much.” I used them to glance at my husband. “As happy as I am to see the place, why are we on Joren?”
“I cannot say.” He scanned the horizon. “This is Marine province, but I do not see the HouseClan pavilion.”
Neither did I. “Maybe they moved it.” I turned around, and nearly fell on my face.
“What do you here, Terrans?”
The Jorenian male standing behind us was as big, strong, and handsome as the rest of his people, and he had the requisite black hair and white-within-white eyes. His skin, however, was not blue but tan, and as he made a gesture of greeting, I saw he had five fingers.
He’d also spoken to us in StanTerran.
“We’re just visiting, ClanSon,” I said carefully. “I’m Cherijo. This is my husband, Duncan.”
He didn’t react to our names. “I am Kol Kalea.” He glanced around us. “Do you seek the settlement?”
“Yes,” Reever said before I could ask what that was.
The crossbreed smiled. “I am meeting my bondmate there. Come, I will take you along the path.”
Kol led us across the pasture and up a hill. “Are you and your husband cattle buyers?”
“No,” I said. “We’re . . . travelers.”
“I did not see you when I left the settlement earlier,” he said. “You have no vehicle. How did you come to be in that field?”
“It’s a long story,” I advised him as we reached the top of the hill, and I stopped for a moment so I could absorb what I was seeing.
HouseClan Torin had moved their pavilion, which was now atop some cliffs overlooking the sea. It was also surrounded by thousands of smaller structures that appeared to be housing, businesses, and gathering points. All of them were definitely not of Jorenian design.
“Okay, this is new,” I murmured to Reever.
He took my hand in his. “ClanSon Kalea, could you tell us something about the settlement? Who lives here?”
“This is Torin territory, of course, but anyone may live here
. This was the first open settlement on Joren, but it has proven to be such a success that all of the other HouseClans are opening their territories and developing their own merchant colonies.”
“Really.” My adopted people had always been friendly, but at the same time extremely territorial. “What made the Torin decide to build this open settlement?”
“It was part of the Expansion Treaty.” Now he looked puzzled. “Where have you been traveling?”
“Oh, here and there.” I exchanged a look with Reever. “We’ve been out of touch for a long time.”
“I see.” It was pretty obvious that he didn’t. “The terms of the treaty required at least one multispecies colony to be established on every world, so that each species might develop tolerance through free trade. It has not been without its difficulties, but the Terrans have done a great deal to help smooth the path for others.”
I wanted to laugh. “The Terrans have been helpful.”
He inclined his head. “Their customs of embracing diversity and expanding knowledge through exploration have been adopted by thousands of worlds. Your people are highly regarded as ambassadors of peace and understanding wherever they go. But I do not understand. How could you not know this?”
“Our journey took us away from the explored quadrants for many years,” Reever said.
“Before the treaty was struck,” I added without thinking.
“That, lady, was more than two hundred years past.” The Jorenian folded his arms. “I know Terrans do not live so long.”
I couldn’t tell him that we were immortal—assuming we still were—so I’d have to come up with a convincing lie. Fortunately my husband was much more skilled in that department.
“There was a problem with the stasis equipment on board our ship,” he told Kol. “It did not rouse us when it was programmed to.”
His dark brows rose. “Stasis travel was not developed until the year of my birth, Terran, and I have not yet celebrated thirty name days.”
“It was an experimental prototype,” I assured him. “That’s probably why it malfunctioned.”
