Thieves of Light

by Michael Hudson

  "No. I made it up. I wanted something sort of exotic sounding, Oriental-like a kung fu name." He hesitated. "What does it mean to Li-hon?"

  Parcival studied Jarvis for a long moment before answering. "Battle-child."

  "Battle-child," he repeated. "Okay. I'll be up in a little while."

  "Okay," Parcival said, turning away again.

  "Parcival?"

  "What?"

  "I think maybe it'd be simpler if you called me Bhodi Li, too."

  Parcival frowned disapprovingly, then shrugged. "If that's what you want-Bhodi Li."

  The doorway contracted behind him, leaving Jarvis alone with the disquieting sense that Parcival understood something about him that he himself did not.

  Why should he care what name I use? It doesn't mean anything either way -

  But it did mean something. It had pleased him to hear the alien call him by his Photon name and pleased him even more to learn that chance had given that name appropriate meaning.

  He knew that there was a clue in that which could tell him what had troubled the youth, but Bhodi Li could not read it. So he did what he had always done when understanding escaped him-he dismissed the matter from his mind. He wanted a shower, and then he wanted more answers-many more answers. The moratorium on questions had ended when he proclaimed his first refusal, and Bhodi Li intended to take full advantage of his freedom while it lasted.

  It was the strangest shower Bhodi Li had ever taken. There was no shower head; when he touched the controls inside the bathing enclosure, droplets of lukewarm water began to fall from the entire surface of the ceiling as though he were standing outside in a drizzle. There was no way to shower and not wash one's hair at the same time; in fact, there was no place Bhodi Li could stand and not have water running down his face and into his eyes.

  Further fiddling increased the intensity of the falling water to that of a summer squall, but if there were a way to alter the temperature, Bhodi Li never found it. Maybe that's the point, he thought. Maybe in the rest of the galaxy they only wash when it rains.

  There were no towels and no obvious substitutes, like a blower or radiator. Bhodi Li eventually used one pair of coveralls to dry off before climbing into a second pair. The wet garment went with his fragrant arena clothes into a receptacle that Bhodi Li hoped was a hamper and not some other species' version of a toilet.

  Returning to the upper deck, Bhodi Li made his way down the corridor compartment by compartment, less to look for the others than to cement his mental picture of the ship's plan. He understood little of what he saw but made himself remember enough to distinguish one room from another.

  He found Li-hon and Parcival both in the relatively spacious arrowhead-shaped compartment at the end of the corridor. But he paid almost no attention to them. His attention was captured by the three broad rectangular windows-right, left and center-inset above the U-shaped bridge console.

  The two side windows were pure black, telling Bhodi Li that they were not windows at all but some sort of video display. But the forward window was alive with streaks of reddish light radiating outward from a central focus; it looked as though Fraanic were diving through an exploding fireworks shell.

  "What makes the stars look like that?" Bhodi Li asked, pointing.

  "Those aren't the stars," Parcival said tolerantly. "We're traveling too fast to see anything but tachyons, except there turns out to be no such thing."

  "Then what is that?"

  "Harl-ben-qi-jaslan," Li-hon said. "The Female Wept Twice."

  "What?"

  "It's a poem Li-hon is working on," Parcival said. "One of his better ones, too."

  "Flattery won't change your duty load," Li-hon said.

  "A poem?" was Bhodi Li's skeptical reply. "A poem is 'How do I love thee?' or maybe 'There once was a lady from Kent-' "

  "This is a color poem," Li-hon said. "Very popular on Bree-nech."

  "But there's no words."

  "It is meant to stimulate the mind directly," said Li-hon.

  Bhodi Li watched the changing patterns for a few seconds. "I'm not getting anything."

  "You have to learn how to open yourself," Li-hon said, unperturbed. "But if you never learn, don't worry. I write word poems, too."

  Bhodi Li turned a quizzical look on the alien. "Isn't that a little strange, for someone who looks like you-a Guardian of the Light-to write poetry?"

  "On your world, do warriors only know how to kill?"

  "Well-no, I guess not. But they find other ways to spend their spare time."

  "Cultivate the whole," Li-hon said, sounding like some sort of golden-oldie guru. "If you define yourself by what you do, you will lose sight of what you are."

  "Sure," Bhodi Li said noncommittally. Silently, he was thinking, a kid warrior and a sergeant that spends his spare time writing poems you have to watch-the First Guardian must be harder up for good people than they're letting me think. Or maybe these are just the First Guardian's errand boys, and the front-line troops are cut from different cloth. "When are you going to tell me what this war is all about?"

  "Are you ready for the Truth of Photon?" Li-hon asked.

  "Sure."

  "Then sit, Bhodi Li, and learn."

  The lights dimmed on the bridge as the color poem vanished from the center window, leaving the compartment in darkness. "Before time, before light, before life, there was Photon," Li-hon said, and a swirling ball of blue-white light appeared behind him. "In simplicity and completeness, Photon contained all energy, embraced all of space, embodied all order. There was balance, but there was also stasis. So, to gift the universe with growth and change, Photon chose-"

  "That thing's alive?" Bhodi Li said.

  From Parcival, seated behind, came a harsh whisper: "Don't interrupt."

  "— chose to spread its essence throughout creation. Order ended, and time began."

  The ball of swirling light suddenly exploded, sending rocket like streamers out in every direction, filling all three windows with color. "Where the energy of Photon touched the new creation, stars and planets formed," Li-hon continued as the streamers of color evolved into a more familiar-looking starscape full of flaming suns and slow-spinning worlds. "In time, Photon light brought forth Photon life. Born from Photon, we held within us the truth of Photon, and so brought the light to other worlds."

  The center window showed a pulsing many-faceted crystal resting on a black pedestal on the surface of a barren world. A Qeth warrior, perhaps Li-hon himself, fired a laser into the heart of the crystal, and it exploded into a furious mass of colored light reminiscent of the destruction of the primordial Photon energy ball. The streaming colored light transformed the barren world into a verdant paradise.

  "But there was darkness in the new creation as well, and in time the darkness, too, gave birth to life," Li-hon continued. On the center screen, the new world of life faded and was replaced by a succession of shocking images of horrifying aliens-a four-armed monster with a deeply furrowed skull, a snarling beast with huge jaws and spiked tail, a brutish creature with a triangular head and great bulging compound eyes.

  Bhodi Li swallowed hard. If they're the enemy, you can take me home now -

  "The forces of darkness have united under the Warlord of Arr, and begun the battle that will decide the destiny of the universe. It is a battle for control of the remnants of Photon energy, and for the Photon crystals that bring light and life to empty worlds. Whoever radiates the crystal first aligns that world with light or darkness for the next hundred cycles. Should the forces of evil bring a crystal to one of the Alliance worlds-to my Bree-nech or your Earth or any world dear to life-it would mean the destruction of all."

  On the left screen, an image of a great space station appeared against a backdrop of stars, its shape suggestive of a metallic flower perched at the top of its stalk. On the right screen, a radically different structure appeared against a black void, its shape like an A-bomb cloud frozen a moment after detonation, its surface battere
d and scarred like the moon. Tiny ships scurried from both bases to engage each other above the worlds displayed on the center screen.

  "If the Alliance loses this conflict, it will be the end of light and life everywhere in the Universe," Li-hon said solemnly. "Do you understand now, Bhodi Li? We are Photon's warriors. We are the Guardians of the Light. We cannot let the darkness grow."

  All three screens faded to black, and the bridge lights returned to their normal intensity. Bhodi Li stayed seated, his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze cast downward at the deck. How stupid does he think I am? he thought angrily. Balls of light deciding to explode-magic crystals that turn deserts into Eden — creatures of darkness — it's a fairy tale. It's a crock.

  "Do you understand, Bhodi Li?" Li-hon repeated. Looking up, he saw an expectant gaze on the lizard's face. Parcival had circled around to stand beside his sergeant; curiously, his expression was harder to read.

  "I thought you were going to be straight with me," Bhodi Li said, standing.

  Suddenly wide-eyed, Parcival stepped back, taking himself beyond Li-hon's peripheral vision, and started frantically shaking his head.

  "Every word I spoke was the truth," Li-hon said stiffly.

  "Get real! You can't expect me to swallow-" Belatedly, Bhodi Li took note of Parcival's agitation. The youth now had one hand clapped over his mouth and was making cutting motions across his throat with the other.

  What! Bhodi Li demanded silently with his eyes. What am I doing wrong? Then he remembered Parcival's earlier warning about offending a Photon Warrior and decided to swallow his objections for the moment. "You can't expect me to adjust right away to such a revelation," Bhodi Li said. "I need some time to absorb this."

  Parcival closed his eyes and sighed in relief.

  But Li-hon did not seem willing to be put off. "The truth was already within you," he said. "All you need do is learn its name to be empowered by it."

  It was Parcival who came to his rescue. "I'll help him, Li-hon. Don't be impatient. It's difficult for us-you've seen it before. We don't hear with the heart. So it takes longer for us to find the light."

  "I know," Li-hon said ominously. "I remember. Some never do."

  Parcival left Li-hon's side and crossed the room, herding Bhodi Li ahead of him toward the doorway. "Bhodi will," he insisted. "The light shines."

  "The light shines," echoed Li-hon. "I will be patient, Parcival-for a while."

  CHAPTER SIX

  "What was that all about?" Bhodi Li demanded as Parcival bundled him along the corridor.

  "Let it ride until we get downstairs," was the terse answer. Then Parcival changed gears and said in a more friendly tone, "I hope you don't have any exotic tastes in food, by the way. The ground team prepares a food pickup anytime a ship calls at Earth, but the selection's limited, and most everything is frozen. Except the peanut butter."

  By the end of that exposition, they had both reached the bottom of the climbway. "I suppose that means it's going to be a while until my next pizza."

  "Until your next good one, anyway."

  "If it gets to be more than a week, even a cardboard-crusted imitation-cheese-food special will start looking good," Bhodi Li said. "Do I get an answer to my question now?"

  "Let's go sit a minute in my quarters," the youth said with a jerk of his head.

  Parcival's berth was a case study in how much could be packed into one of the tiny rooms, especially if the occupant happened to be only four feet tall and sixty-five pounds. The right-hand wall was broken up by six fold-out storealls, each the size of the one Parcival had opened in Bhodi Li's room. Above the storealls hung several soft-sided pouches bulging with their burdens. The cot was folded down, and the space beneath it was filled with large silver-metal chests. A baseball bat was propped in one corner, a well-used glove dangling from the grip.

  Bhodi settled on the cot while Parcival climbed atop one of the storealls and rummaged in the pouch above it. He came back with a matchbox-sized black box that he stood on end beside him. A small yellow light on top of the gadget began to wink on and off.

  "It's a sound mask. Li-hon wouldn't spy on us, but I want to make sure he doesn't hear any of this by accident," Parcival explained.

  "I don't understand."

  "That's obvious. I can hardly believe it, but you're even dumber than you look. Haven't you got sense enough not to stand in somebody else's church and make fun of the liturgy?" Parcival scolded.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about what you were about to say to the Sarge a few minutes ago."

  "You heard the line he was giving me. Don't tell me you believe him."

  Parcival sighed and pulled his legs up into a yoga lotus cross as though settling in for a while. "You were in school twice as long as I was, and you still didn't learn anything."

  A hot flush crept up the back of Bhodi's neck. "Hey, I've had about enough of your smart talk. Maybe you are some kind of born genius, but that doesn't make it okay to dump on people that aren't."

  Parcival stared, then hung his head. "You're right," he said simply. "I get impatient with people who are slow on the uptake. I always have. I'll try to watch it."

  "Okay," Bhodi said, taken aback by the youth's contriteness. He noticed that his own fists were clenched and unclenched them, wondering in passing if Parcival had backed off to avoid having to fight him-and if there was anything to his boasting, having to hurt him. "So let's try it again."

  "All right," Parcival said. "Do you know what the word photon means?"

  "Uh-it's got something to do with light. Wait, isn't it the little particles light is made of?"

  "More or less. The photon is the fundamental unit of radiant energy. To these people it's something even more fundamental than that. They've personified and deified light into the First Principle of the cosmos. What you heard from Li-hon is what's called a cosmogony-an explanation of the origin of things. By the way, what's yours?"

  "What's my what?"

  "What's your explanation for the existence of stars and human beings and peanut butter?"

  Bhodi Li struggled to dredge up some scraps of abandoned memory. "Well-in science they told us something about the big bang. And then a few million years later there were these little water animals in the ocean and then evolution took over-dinosaurs, and Neanderthals, and then us. There were ice ages, too. Peanut butter was George Washington Carver," he added with a grin.

  "I don't think I've ever heard it compressed quite that ruthlessly," Parcival said, answering the grin with a wry smile. "And your time scale is off by a factor of a thousand. What about God?"

  "Well-that's another story. How does the creed go? 'I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible'-something like that."

  "So answer my question. What's your explanation? What do you believe?"

  Bhodi Li was beginning to feel like he was taking an oral exam. "Well-I guess I believe that the big bang was when God started everything. And everything that happened after was part of His plan. You know, evolution was His way of making us. I don't guess I've really thought about it much."

  "Typical," Parcival sniffed, with a hint of his earlier condescension. "So what you believe is a mixture of facts and guesses and things you take on authority, like the idea there even is a God, and they don't necessarily fit together smoothly. Just like what you heard from Li-hon."

  "Are you saying that what I believe would sound as cracked to Li-hon as what he said did to me?"

  "It might. But if it did, he'd be being as unfair as you were going to be to him." Parcival paused to collect his thoughts. "To Li-hon, to the whole Alliance as far as I can tell, what he told you isn't a religious belief. It's the way they look at the Universe. It's part of what they are. They accept it as unquestioningly as we accept breathing and eating and sleeping when it's dark."

  "But they are wrong."

  Shaking his head, Parcival said, "They're like the old human
societies that worshiped the sun as God the lifegiver. They weren't all wrong. And neither is Li-hon. But it does affect how they look at the war. It may even be the reason for the war."

  "Really? How?"

  "Would you like to hear the Gospel according to Parcival? I haven't got it all figured out, but I've got a pretty interesting working hypothesis."

  "Can we get something to eat first?"

  Parcival hopped off his perch. "Good idea."

  "I know it is," Bhodi Li said. "Even we morons have them every now and then."

  Over a surprisingly good cheeseburger with a fresh Red Delicious apple on the side, Bhodi Li listened attentively to Parcival's version of the Photon cosmogony.

  According to Parcival, it began with a race called the Ylem. To them, the big bang was not an act of God-it was the creator God itself, giving up its own life to bring life to the Universe. The stars were remnants of God in its purest form; the life-forms populating the planets the fulfillment of God's final wish.

  When the Ylem became spacefaring they also became evangelists, carrying the Truth of Photon to the other inhabited worlds. With their starships and other technological miracles to validate their status as special messengers of revelation, they brought answers to beings which up to that point had only questions. The Alliance was forged on the strength of the Ylem cosmogony.

  But unifying all known life in one belief was not enough to satisfy the Alliance's sense of mission. To the Ylem and their converts, it seemed not fitting that there should be stars with no life of their own. They saw it as their holy obligation to colonize one world in every system, thereby helping to complete their Creator's final vision. Where there were no planets suitable for habitation, they made one over with the help of the Photon crystals.

  "They regard them almost as religious artifacts, like the Eucharist or a piece of the Shroud of Turin," Parcival explained. "But they're really tremendous little chemical laboratories driven by microfusion and solar energy. What they do is modify a planet's atmosphere so it supports our kind of life."