Rabelna Dorna came out of the port several doors away and headed off down the street, looking as if she knew where she was going.
I will follow her, Blaylock said, handing Galen his suitcase and keeping the sample case. Go to the hotel. Wait for me there.
He strode away before Galen had a chance to reply.
Galen glanced quickly at the Shadows, at the other pedestrians on the street. No one seemed to take an interest in either him or Blaylock.
Blaylock would want him to use the time to work on the spell for listening to the Shadows. And he would, no matter how much he wanted to avoid it. But he had something else to do first.
The port city was vast, and was filled with energies, many of types Galen had never seen before. He scanned slowly, searching for the energy characteristic of a mage. He detected his own, of course, and Blaylocks. Yet beyond that, he could not be sure. The energies he sensed were strange, and powerful, and he could not easily eliminate them to discover whether subtler mage energy lurked beneath. If it was present, he would have to do a much more detailed scan to find it. He put his sensors to work on the job, knowing it could take days, and even then the results would likely be inconclusive. Yet one way or another, Galen must know if Elizar was here. And if he was, no matter how many Shadows protected him, he could not be allowed to live.
The hotel was fifteen blocks away. Galen would walk there, and plant as many probes along the way as he could. Though he had his own reason for coming to the rim, he would do everything he could to help Blaylock and the mages, as hed promised. Fed had said it was a suicide mission, and he was right. Blaylock knew it; that was why hed brought the relay, so that any information they gained could reach the mages, even if they could not. Galen was at peace with that; it was the only thought, lately, that brought him any peace. He had hoped for an end to this, and Thenothk would most likely provide it. But he was determined that, if there was any way it could be accomplished, Elizars end would come before his.
As he started down the street, a ship came in for a landing at the port, poorly maintained engines screaming at the effort of deceleration. The planet seemed to mount an endless assault against the senses. Clouds of haze and fumes drifted down the city canyons. Construction was under way everywhere, confirming what GLeel had told him about the citys rapid growth. The roads formed a chaotic maze, intersecting at odd angles. New buildings sometimes blocked off entire streets. In other places, roads curled in on themselves and simply ended. There seemed no plan to it, or if there was a plan, it was complex and well hidden. Grand, expensive structures stood beside squat, seemingly abandoned ones. Factories were mixed with residences, businesses with lurid entertainments. Along the way, Galen saw few Shadows. Their concentration was sparse, and they seemed to pass undetected by most. Yet he had a feeling more were here. They liked to remain hidden.
With a growing sense of unease, Galen at last reached the hotel. Inside, it was an island of quiet. In the desire to portray them as well-to-do businessmen, Blaylock had booked them adjoining rooms in one of the more expensive establishments. Galen checked in and went up to his room. He was surprised to find that it was tiny, barely fitting a bed and desk and a miniature bathroom. Space was at a premium here.
In its adrenaline-heightened state, the tech raced with anxious energy. He put the suitcases to one side, found the temperature control, turned it up. The small space made it all the more apparent that there was no avoiding what he must now do. He had a task, the same task he had faced every day since their journey to the rim had begun, and this time he must not put it aside until it was completed. He must no longer resist the memories, must not break away no matter how difficult the work became. If they were to know the Shadows plans for the mages, including Elric and the others on Babylon 5, they must be able to decode the Shadows communications.
He pulled the scarf from his pocket, ran his fingers over the small bundle.
To keep you warm , she said. She grabbed the scarf and wrapped it around his neck, her subtle essence enveloping him. She leaned back, biting her lip. Quite handsome .
Did you weave this yourself?
She rested her head against his shoulder. Of course .
Does that mean theres a spell woven into it?
Thats for you to unravel.
He sat on the bed, eyes closed, and hunched over the scarf. He forced his fingers, stitch by stitch, down its edge. It was a thought of hers, frozen in time, given to him.
He had already recorded the pattern, yet for some reason he persisted in touching the scarf, as if it held additional information that the recording did not, some essence of hers, something that remained. Yet there was nothing, nothing but an abstract pattern. He had tried to break down the complex sequence of bumps, plateaus, and valleys, yet the sequence seemed random, chaotic, just as the Shadow signals had been.
The simplest way to understand her code, of course, would be to guess what spell or message she had woven into it, and then to search for correspondences between that and the scarfs pattern. He had not wanted to think of her, though, or of what message she might have left him. But now he had no choice.
Beside him, her body pressed against his. Her presence, her smell enveloped him. She leaned back, biting her lip. Quite handsome .
His name. She might have included his name.
He searched for different ways she might have encoded it within the weaving. She could have used the numerical equivalents to the letters: seven for G , one for A . She could have used the pattern of the rune he had chosen to represent him. She could have translated his name into different languages. She could have used one of many complex codes that had been developed by various species over the years, or a code of her own. Time passed. He did not find it.
He must search for another word.
The scarf clenched in his hands, he stood, shivering. He turned up the temperature control as far as it would go, then stumbled back to the bed.
The word he didnt want to look for, of course, the word that he had never wanted to look for, was love . The word she had said to him as she lay dying. The word he had never said to her.
When he searched for patterns connected to that word, he found them everywhere. The word, in different forms, was embedded throughout the scarf, on the small scale and the large, one pattern intersecting the next.
The scarf did not hold some super-complex code, as he had thought. It held many small, simple patterns woven one on top of the other. He didnt know how hed failed to see it. When hed sat beside her in the training hall on Soom, when hed examined her shield, the most striking thing about it had been its simplicity. It had been the order and elegance of her thought that had first drawn him to her.
Now that he understood how one word of her message had been encoded into the scarf, it was fairly simple to find the rest. As with the single word, the entire message was repeated again and again, in countless different patterns. The words revealed themselves to him one at a time, until the entire message at last emerged, a communication from the past to the present, from the dead to the living, brought finally to light in a different universe from that in which it had been created. Her breath whispered in his ear.
Love need not be spoken to be felt.
Galen looked down at the scarf clutched in his hand. He seemed to see it from a great distance, this dirty tan weaving, this insignificant piece of cloth. She excused him for his failing, excused him for being the repressed, inadequate, unfit Human being he was.
How had he shown her his love?
He had failed to prevent her fatal wound, and as she lay dying, instead of reassuring her with loving words, he had argued with her.
Her chest had labored to draw in air, to find in those last moments the breath to speak, to reassure him , to declare her love.
And then she had gone.
Her message made no difference. She might have forgiven him, but he would never forgive himself.
He saw her again in death, her face slack, tilted
to one side. Her lips were slightly parted, her grey eyes blank and cold. The partially healed cut ran down the right side of her forehead into her thin brow. Her skin carried an odd shininess, a sense of artifice.
I could not hove lived , her voice whispered to him, knowing that I did not protect you .
He forced himself to withhold the cry that wanted to escape, to contain the furious energy that burned through him. He was shaking. But he could not bring down the fire. It might be detected. He retreated into a mind-focusing exercise, then another, then another, recoiling from that place, that time, withdrawing from those feelings, contracting into the dark, secret center of himself.
Gradually he realized that he had accessed her files and was applying his new insight to the translation of her spells. His mind worked mechanically, dispassionately. Hours passed. The room turned dark.
Many of her hand movements, he found, could be grouped into separate, recurring subpatterns, clarifying the structure of the spells. The translations became easier, more straightforward.
The main problem he still faced was the fact that many of her spells took place over extended periods of time, arising from a series of motions. His spells were cast in an instant, through a single equation. He was not sure how the time factor translated into his language.
If it was irrelevant, as it seemed might be true from some of her simpler spells, then his equation should be the equivalent of all her hand movements performed at once. If an index finger of the left hand made a particular motion, then, and a few seconds later the index finger of the right hand mirrored that motion, would those two terms cancel each other out? He thought, perhaps, they would.
As he worked with the spell for Shadow communication, he found more and more terms canceling each other out, the translation growing simpler and simpler. He thought he must have made a mistake, for at the end he was suddenly left with only a single term in his spell. And oddly, the spell was identical to one of the one-term equations hed discovered as theyd traveled to the rim.
He had derived that new one-term equation from a progression involving several different types of spells, which made its effect difficult to guess. The progression had included the spell to send a message, though, as well as the more complex electron incantation they used to engage in long-distance conversation. So it was possible the spell might involve communication.
But how could such a complex signal as the Shadows be decoded with such a simple spell? Of course, it was simple only in his language, not in hers, and probably not in the languages of other mages. He went back over his translation, checking each step. If the time factor was irrelevant, his findings were correct. If it was not, he didnt know how to translate the spell.
He had thought, after conjuring the one-term equation of destruction, that any spell with only a single term would prove unstable, not a complete spell at all. If that was true, then this spell could be as dangerous as the other.
Even if it worked as her spell had worked, they would be in great danger. Shed had to be within three feet of their enemies in order to tap into their signal. And once she had, shed been overwhelmed by its power.
The image came to him. Her body, lying twisted on the floor. Her mouth stretching wide, so wide that her head quivered. The muscles on her neck writhing. And the words of the Shadows driving out of her with the force of possession.
Even when theyd fled, shed remained in the grip of the signal. Galen had feared it would never release her. When at last shed come back to herself, his relief had been so great it had been something he didnt want to think about how much she meant to him, how quickly shed transformed his life, and how in losing her, he would lose everything.
Galen shot to his feet, began pacing back and forth beside the bed. The room was deep in shadow. It was late. Blaylock had been gone for more than four hours. Where was he?
Galen scanned for mage energy, but could isolate only his own. He visualized the equation to access the probes hed planted. In his minds eye a menu listed them. He selected first the one on Rabelna Dornas hand. She was in a restaurant, eating dinner. Galen saw nothing of Blaylock. He went from one probe to the next, looking for Blaylock, searching for any useful information, anything to take his mind from himself, from the scarf still clutched in his hand.
He saw the inside of a factory producing delicate, curved metal devices. One of the workers fit the fragile formation, little more than a few sculpted strands of metal, over his head. On each side, it ran from cheek to temple to forehead, and down to the nape of the neck. The worker drooped his head to the side, hung his tongue out of his mouth, and laughed.
Galen saw a warehouse where crates marked as Centauri in origin were being filled with weapons and prepared for shipping to Centauri Prime. In a dark room, he heard the Narn from the ship discussing with another whether their faction might at last gain control of the KhaRi and lead their people in the extermination of the Centauri. In a bar, he heard talk of war, and of profits to be made.
The bar reminded him of GLeel and the rest of the crew of the Khatkhata . Galen wondered whether they might be on Thenothk. Their ship had made several runs here in the past. When theyd crossed paths on Zafran 8, Galen had planted probes on them, and an FTL relay aboard their ship, so that the probes could be accessed even from a great distance. He hadnt tried to access those probes, though, since the convocation.
At that time, theyd been on Thenothk, unloading a cargo of telepaths in sleeper tubes. The purpose of the telepaths remained unclear, except for one, who was to be Elizars personal weapon. Elizar had said as much, when hed come aboard to claim a telepath for his own.
The images of Galens fantasy arose again: Elizar turning and seeing him, that angular, arrogant face filling with fear. And then, Galens hands covered in blood, clutching the broken threads of Elizars tech.
Galen hadnt dared to access the Khatkhata probes again, to see Elizar continuing with his life as if nothing had hap-pened. Instead, Galen had given Elric his key, so Elric could access the relay on the ship and, through it, the probes on the crew. After a few days, Elric had told him that contact had been lost. The relay and the probes must have become separated, or else the probes had been destroyed.
If the probes were still intact and they were near enough, Galen could access them directly, without the relay. From his menu, he selected the probes on the Narn crew, and he was surprised to see their images spread out before him.
The crew was in a bar, of course. That seemed to be where they spent most of their time. The room was dimly lit, with a low ceiling and rough, exposed beams. Most of the crew looked fairly advanced in their drinking. They were hanging over each other, gold and black spotted heads swaying unsteadily, as they chanted one of their endless drinking games. They made obscene profits transporting goods to the rim and seemed to have little idea how to spend the money, except in drinking and extravagant self-indulgence.
Second-in-command of the Khatkhata , GLeel sat apart from them with her back to the bar, quiet and watchful. In the past, she would have joined in.
Captain KoVin stumbled up to her, and Galen quickly accessed his Narn translation program. As KoVin spoke, the translation appeared in his minds eye.
You could drink those fools under the table. Come on, lets make some money.
I have enough money , GLeel said.
This sobriety thing is getting really annoying , KoVin said. You didnt find religion, did you ? He leaned close. What you need is a little love to loosen you up .
Youre starting to look pretty repulsive , she said.
KoVin made a dismissive, untranslatable sound, and lurched to the bar for a refill.
GLeel had been a valuable source of information before.
Perhaps shed learned more since theyd last spoken. Galen located the probes. They were only a quarter mile away.
Isabelle would say that GLeels presence here, at this time, was evidence of an order to the universe: the universe had put GLeel here in order to help him. But he f
ound no special significance in GLeels presence. They had first questioned her because she was transporting people and materials to Thenothk. The fact that she was here now was a logical consequence.
Isabelle had convinced GLeel to give them information. She had known, somehow, that this drunken, mercenary Narn would help them. She had believed that GLeel could transcend herself.
Just as shed believed Galen could transcend himself.
Thats why I was put in your life. You have opened yourself to another. That was the first. Next you will open yourself to yourself. Finally, you will open yourself to God. To his design.
He could not do what she asked. He could not open himself to anyone againnot another, not himself, most especially not a god who would take her away from him as part of some cosmic plan. He was who he was, and he would continue to fail her, even now.
The only way to maintain control was not to open up but to close down, to hold his words and his actions within. If he opened himself, he knew what would come out. Destruction. Galen crossed his arms over his chest, shivering. The need to act was becoming overwhelming.
He stopped his pacing. He could not stay here, with the endless thoughts, the relentless memories. Hed fled all the way to the rim, and still they haunted him. He wadded the scarf into a ball, threw it against the wall. He would find GLeel, and see what she could tell him.
He opened the door to the adjoining room, left a note in the language of the Soom telling Blaylock where he would be.
Then he left, slamming the door behind him.
Then you are familiar with the techno-mages, hmm? Londo asked John Sheridan.
Londo stood at the window in Johns office, hands clasped behind his back, surveying the stations vast gardens as if they were his own personal property. Elric watched through a probe Alwyn had managed to plant on Johns neck.
Babylon 5 17 - Techno-Mages 02 - Summoning Light (Cavelos, Jeanne) Page 16
