The Chaos Crystal

by Jennifer Fallon

  He glanced at Hawkes, seeing his own confusion, shock and disbelief reflected in the spymaster's face.

  'What are we going to do now?' Arryl asked as the image silently resolved into clarity on the screen.

  'Retrieve the Chaos Crystal,' Lukys said, freezing the image.

  'Do we know where it is?' Cayal asked, hoping he sounded as if that was all he cared about.

  isn't it here in Paris?' Maralyce said, in a museum?'

  Coryna shook her head. 'Our skull is in Chicago. It's part of a private collection. With the Tide up, it should be a simple matter to retrieve it from the owners.' She smiled at Hawkes. 'Tides, you're the richest man on Earth, Declan. You could probably buy it for us.'

  'And then what?' Hawkes asked with a worried expression.

  'We start making preparations for the next King Tide, son,' Lukys announced, turning from the screen to face the others, 'because as soon as the people of Earth see these pictures coming in from space and realise what it means, it will be time for us to move on.'

  'Use the Chaos Crystal? That will destroy Earth,' Hawkes reminded them, quite unnecessarily, Cayal thought.

  'Shame about that,' Lukys said with a shrug.

  CHAPTER 64

  The Med-Lab of the AEVITAS Deep Space Explorer Cape Canaveral was stark and white and carefully temperature controlled. And had been strictly sealed against all outside contamination ever since they'd found their prize floating in space. Randy checked the seal gauge on his suit one last time, making certain it was green all the way, before he opened the inner door. When he was satisfied it was safe, he palmed the lock with his gloved hand and waited as the clear glass door slid open with a faint hiss. He floated through, palmed the lock on the other side and went to check on his patient.

  Dr Randy Marks was more than a little taken with his patient. Even unconscious, she was beautiful, and he'd spent hours in here, checking her over, wondering who she was.

  Physically, she was flawless. Almost too flawless. He couldn't find a single fault with her physiology — except for her continued coma. He couldn't pinpoint her ethnicity, either. She was like one of those exotic creatures who cropped up in late-night ads for virtual sex who claimed — with a seductive giggle — to be of Irish/Chinese/African/Spanish extraction.

  Nothing about her DNA gave. any hint of her origins, either.

  Randy checked the monitors again, knowing that as usual, there would be nothing new, and then he turned to study her again. He dreamed about her sometimes. In fact, it was such a dream that had

  brought him here tonight — although night was a relative term aboard ship — to check on her progress.

  The mystery of the Asteroid Girl — as the media networks had dubbed her back on Earth when word got out about her existence — defied all logic. Randy had not been able to explain how she lived, how she had survived the incomprehensible cold of deep space, how she'd not imploded from exposure to a vacuum — or, indeed, how she had managed to get here at all.

  They were checking, of course. But the Cape Canaveral was the first Earth ship to make it out this far into the asteroid belt. Supposedly.

  The scenario with the shortest odds was that she was the last survivor of a Russian ship sent out during the 1960s. Perhaps she was a cosmonaut. Perhaps her capsule overshot the moon and she ended up here in the asteroid belt.

  Of course, for that to be the case there had to be a Russian capsule somewhere out there, too. And she'd been naked when they found her. Even assuming that was the case, any collision with an asteroid violent enough to destroy a space capsule and burn the clothes from a cosmonaut's body, wasn't going to leave the cosmonaut whole, unharmed and with not a mark on her.

  And still alive over a century later, after breathing nothing but vacuum for all that time.

  Although he knew it was pointless, Randy checked the monitors again. As they had shown since they found her, everything was perfect. Her heart beat like a metronome. Her breathing was deep and even. Her brain activity was slow but more than enough to indicate there was an awareness hiding somewhere, waiting for a chance to return.

  Because the Asteroid Girl was so physically flawless, a few of the crewmen were speculating that she was really an android. Randy had scoffed at the suggestion. If you cut her, she bled like any other

  human (as he'd discovered when he took blood for testing when they'd first brought her in), although she'd healed with unnatural speed.

  Like everything else about this enigmatic woman, her blood work showed nothing but perfectly normal levels of everything that ought to be there and nothing that shouldn't.

  That in itself was worrying. There wasn't the slightest trace of anything that might have chemically preserved this woman and stopped her from dying in space.

  Randy looked up as the door hissed open and discovered another suited figure floating into the Med- Lab. The glare of the overhead lighting made the occupant's features invisible behind the plexiglass faceplate. The name on the suit's left breast, however, gave the newcomer's identity away.

  'You're up late, Captain.'

  So are you, Randy. Any change?'

  He looked down at his patient and shook his head. 'Nothing. What brings you down here?'

  'The company wants another series of photos sent through. Something a little less necrophiliac-ish than the last shots you sent, is how the publicity people put it.'

  'Jeezus, can't they leave her in peace?'

  'A beautiful woman found inexplicably alive and floating naked in space? The poor girl is never going to know another moment's peace as long as she lives.' The captain reached down and stroked her dark hair gently. 'Poor thing. She's square in the middle of a political storm she doesn't even know she's causing.'

  'How bad is it?'

  The captain shrugged. 'I've just been watching the news from Earth. Deke Hawkins has been on every channel who'll give him airtime, crowing about the value of exploration. Apparently, finding our girl here has made him a real hero, even though we all know

  the bastard would have said nothing about this if we hadn't blown the whistle on him before he got a chance to quash the news.'

  Randy nodded, glad now that he'd asked his fiancee, Sally, to risk her job by releasing the video onto the net.

  'Of course,' the captain added, 'every nation on Earth with a space program is accusing the others of sending ships up here in secret to steal the resources of the Belt, now. Kinda glad we're up here with a transmit delay, so they can't drag us into the argument.'

  'They're assuming she's a survivor of a failed mission?'

  The captain nodded. 'That's the money bet. I hear there's several religious cults started up, too, who are already worshipping her image. One of them believes she's the Virgin Mary.'

  'She's not.'

  'Well, yes, Randy, I did sort of work that out for myself.'

  He smiled. 'Actually, ma'am, I meant she's not a virgin.'

  'How do you know?' 'I checked.'

  He couldn't see her face clearly because of the reflection of the lights on the plexiglass, but he could imagine the look the captain was giving him. 'I see.'

  'You ordered a thorough physical exam when we found her, ma'am,' he explained, before she could jump to the wrong conclusion, 'I took thorough to mean an external and internal examination.'

  That seemed to satisfy the captain. 'How old is she, do you think?'

  'Hard to say. There's no deterioration in her cells. She has all her adult teeth, so she's not a child, but as for her actual age — anywhere between fifteen and fifty. Take your pick.'

  'I'm fifty,' the captain reminded him with a small groan. 'And trust me, son, I'm in nothing like the shape this girl is in. Still, the trashy gossip sites will love her. She's pretty enough to pique their interest.'

  'Because God knows, the scientific miracle of her survival is only a mild curiosity,' Randy said, shaking his head, it's so much more important that she's pretty. God, can't they let her alone? At least until sh
e wakes up?'

  is she going to wake up?' the captain asked. 'She's been like this for a while now, you know. Maybe she's doomed to spend the rest of her life in a coma? That sort of thing has happened before, you know.'

  Randy shrugged. 'To be honest, there's no medical reason why she's not awake. Other than, you know ... the whole we-found-her-floating-naked-in-space thing.'

  'Well, I don't suppose I have to tell you to call me if anything changes?'

  'Not really, ma'am,' Randy said. 'No.'

  The captain pushed off the side of the bed and floated toward the door, saying something Randy didn't catch, which was odd, because the suits were radio-miked and they'd all learned the hard way that even the most inaudible comment was recorded for posterity by the ultra-sensitive pickup.

  'Pardon?'

  The captain turned back to him. 'I didn't say anything. I — Oh, my God!'

  She was looking at the bed. Randy followed the direction of her gaze and found himself looking into two dark eyes, blinking in the sudden light.

  'Dim!' he ordered the computer after a moment of stunned inaction, as he realised the lights were causing her pain.

  The woman stared up at him, her face resolving into a mask of abject terror.

  'Take your helmet off!' the captain ordered softly but urgently, as she began to release the seals on her own suit.

  'But the risk of infection ...'

  'The woman survived a vacuum, Randy. And we're scaring the shit out of her. Take it off.'

  The captain's orders made sense. The Asteroid Girl looked terrified. She was struggling to sit up, but the restraints meant to hold her on the bed in this zero-gee environment were preventing her from moving.

  The captain got her helmet off first, let it float away and then gently pushed the girl back onto the bed, talking in a soothing voice. 'There ... there ... it's OK, everything is going to be fine ...'

  Randy's helmet floated toward the autoclave, bumping into it with a clatter. A glance at the monitors told him her pulse and breath were a little elevated, but nothing about which he should be concerned.

  it's OK,' Randy repeated, as she tried to push the captain away. 'You're on a space ship. The mining explorer Cape Canaveral. In the Med-Lab. You've been in some sort of accident, but you're safe now. What's your name?'

  The woman answered him in a language Randy had never heard before. Her voice was panicked, frightened and trembling. Maybe the Russian cosmonaut scenario wasn't far off the mark.

  'What's she saying?' the captain asked.

  Randy shrugged, 'I don't know.'

  He glanced over at the main computer console, identify language spoken by patient Jane Doe.'

  He didn't need to face the console. Like the suits, the lab was miked with ultra-sensitive equipment and could pick up the sound of a dropped needle (assuming there'd been gravity enough to make it fall). But for some reason everyone, ship-wide, turned to look at the nearest console when they wanted to ask the computer something.

  'Patient Jane Doe is speaking no language this database can identify,' the computer's very English and irritatingly smug voice replied after a few moments.

  'Excellent. She speaks fluent gibberish,' the captain said, still trying to hold the struggling woman down. 'Come on, sweetie, settle down. We're not going to hurt you.'

  Something in the captain's tone, if not her words, must have struck a chord with the Asteroid Girl, finally penetrating the panic she must have felt on waking to find herself in this strange place. She slowly relaxed against the pillow, but her gaze still darted nervously from one to the other, like a terrified animal on the brink of flight.

  'Can you tell us your name?' Randy asked, as gently as he could. In truth, his heart was hammering excitedly the way hers should have been.

  The woman looked at him blankly, not understanding a word he said.

  'Randy,' the captain said, pointing to the doctor. And then she pointed to herself. 'Emma.'

  She pointed to Arkady with a questioning look. 'You?'

  When she got no response, the captain tried a second time. 'Randy. Emma. You?'

  The young woman finally seemed to understand. She pointed to Randy and repeated his name. And then she pointed at the captain and said, 'Emma.'

  The captain smiled, nodding and then pointed to her again. 'You? What's your name?'

  The young woman hesitated for a moment, almost as if she had to stop and think about it. For an instant, Randy had a horrible thought that this beautiful woman might be a complete amnesiac, and they would never discover the truth of how she got here. But then she pushed herself up onto her elbows, almost as if she'd made a decision about something.

  She looked around at the lab and then fixed her eyes on Randy. He bent closer to hear her husky voice. She said something inaudible, followed by several words he didn't understand.

  And then she repeated the first word. 'I think she's telling me her name,' he said, looking at the captain in wonder. 'And?'

  it sounds like ... I'm not certain ... I thought she said ... Issa?'

  The Asteroid Girl shook her head violently at his suggestion. He leaned into her again, straining to make out her words and then looked at the captain. 'No, it's something else ...'

  He waited until she repeated the name to make certain he had it right and then he smiled at her.

  'Arkady,' he said, 'I think she's saying Arkady.'

  EPILOGUE

  'Your guest is here, Mr Hawkins.'

  Declan flicked off his screen and its stockmarket report and rose to his feet. He hadn't needed the warning. He could feel the presence of another immortal on the Tide. He glanced out over the city through the hotel window. The view from the penthouse suite was spectacular. Or it should have been. In truth, all he could make out were the tops of the buildings poking up out of the smog haze that shrouded Tokyo and made it such an eye-watering place to live. Declan wasn't fond of Tokyo, but it was the most convenient place from which to embark on his upcoming journey, so he didn't have much choice about being here.

  The young man who'd delivered the news was a bright young thing, straight out of the London School of Economics. Declan had hired him about six months ago to replace his previous assistant. He never kept any assistant longer than a year or two, and always made sure their next position in AEVITAS (or one of its many subsidiaries) was good enough — and well paid enough — that their lasting feeling towards Deke Hawkins was one of gratitude rather than resentment. It made them less likely to question him about the irregularities in his life.

  This latest young man was of Pacific Islander descent, one of the millions of refugees left homeless by the rising sea level. He'd come to Declan's attention after winning a scholarship from one of Deke

  Hawkins' many charitable foundations — set up to ease his corporate tax burden and not from any innate nobility of spirit, according to the popular media.

  'Show him in, Taine,' Declan ordered. 'And let me know when the jet is ready to take off again.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  Taine turned for the door and disappeared into the outer room of the suite. A moment later the door opened again and his guest entered, carrying a large, yet unremarkable, square wooden box with an ivory handle set into the top.

  The newcomer was dressed in a well-cut suit, with an expensive silk tie. He was wearing a new gold watch that probably cost more than Taine earned each year and genuine leather shoes, which only the most affluent of Earth's citizens could afford these days. His attire was in complete contrast to the last time they'd met ... and no doubt paid for by me, Declan reflected.

  That's what I get for putting the Immortal Prince on the payroll.

  Cayal crossed the room without a word and placed the box on the glass-topped desk before he turned to Declan, looking a trifle smug.

  'Have any trouble?'

  Cayal shook his head. 'Not really. Customs got a bit funny when we landed, but Arryl fluttered her eyelashes at them. That helped.'

  'Re
ally?' Declan asked, a little sceptically. In his experience, customs officials — regardless of the country or port — weren't so easily diverted.

  'Oh ... and I think you're now putting at least five children with parents in the Japanese Customs Service through private school and probably college, too.'

  Declan nodded. A bribe like that seemed much more likely. 'Where's Arryl now?'

  'She took a commercial flight to meet Lukys and Coryna in Paris with the legendary "Skull of Doom",'

  he said. Cayal liked calling it the 'Skull of Doom'. Every time he uttered the phrase, he grinned.

  Declan nodded but didn't return his smile. Cayal might be having fun with the idea of wreaking some long overdue vengeance on Lukys for the destruction of Amyrantha, but they didn't have time to relish the prospect just yet. 'We don't have long before Lukys discovers it's a fake.'

  Cayal nodded in agreement. 'I'm ready when you are, Rodent.'

  Declan glanced at the box. 'Did you check —?'

  'That this one is the genuine Chaos Crystal? No, of course I didn't check. I thought we'd waste all this effort for a bit of a lark.'

  Declan wasn't amused. He glared at Cayal, letting his silence speak for him.

  The Immortal Prince grinned, and punched Declan lightly on the shoulder. 'Lighten up, Rodent. If you don't believe me, open the box. It'll suck the Tide right out of you.'

  Declan wanted to open the box. Desperately. But he suspected that if he did, the tenuous trust he'd developed with Cayal since Paris would be destroyed. Besides, there was no way Arryl was currently on her way to Lukys with the real thing. Like Declan and Cayal, she still mourned the loss of Amyrantha and was quite determined not to let the same fate befall their new home on Earth. A second, secret meeting between the three of them, a few days after Lukys' announcement that it was time to leave Earth, had brought them to this moment and this dangerous subterfuge.

  There might come a time, Declan knew, when he could look back at the trail of dead worlds he'd left in his wake, but that time hadn't come yet. Not for him, nor Arryl, nor — somewhat to his surprise — for Cayal, either.