by Victor Koman
They floated, impassively scrutinizing her with black dot eyes that could have been painted on their bulbous heads. They looked like bleached octopii trailing gowns instead of tentacles.
Death Angel meets Nightsheet, and I get to watch.
She took a startled breath of air and sneezed. The musky smell seemed thick enough to grasp. Several of the creatures hissed and shot backward. A few emitted a high pitched, soft giggling noise. All of them had raised their hands to cover the ear holes on the sides of their heads.
One smaller ghost broke away from the group and jetted forward. It zipped back and forth across the room, arms bent at an angle and pumping up and down. It twirled about, stopping, starting, spinning, and shaking like an enchanted handkerchief. In the center of the room it halted, bent at the middle, then looked up at Delia and opened its toothless mouth in a broad crescent smile.
Delia laughed and clapped her hands. The diminutive creature’s smile vanished; it made an embarrassed flatulent noise and shot toward the overhead, hitting it with the sound of wet clothes slapping. It turned and drifted deckward, cradling its soft head in its hands. The other beings bent over double, the air filled with gentle, hysterical giggles. It looked back and almost turned transparent.
“Delia,” the computer whispered. “Please avoid any further sudden motion or loud noises. The People have unusually sensitive hearing. The world they come from is a Dyson shell completely enclosing a dying star. They are used to very low light. And they have not lived under gravity for hundreds of millions of years.”
“I’ll be careful,” she whispered back. “What should I do next?”
“Do you feel comfortable around them?”
She smiled. “Well, of course. They’re sweet.”
Sweet. I hope she doesn’t start using baby talk.
“Good,” the computer urged. “Move slowly toward them.”
“It’s just that it stinks in here.”
“It is their means of zero-gee locomotion, similar to squids.”
“Squids don’t smell up the air.” She floated forward, using the railing near the star chart console. The small one fluttered away and ducked behind the crowd. A few thin filaments clung to Delia’s face.
“What’s this?” she whispered, brushing the stuff out of the way.
“Metabolism by-products. Excreta. Another reason not to scare them.”
She wrinkled her nose and kept moving. One of the wraiths- the fattest one-moved toward her, too.
“Remember, Delia, they cannot hurt you. They are very fragile, and you are more likely to injure them. Be careful.”
“I’m… straight with that.” She stood less than a meter away from the other. It raised one of its tentacles, manipulating array splayed. It shook it at her urgingly. She raised her own hand and the creature grasped it. Delia returned the light squeeze with equal gentleness. Its touch felt like warm, animated putty.
“Bleezthed do beed oo,” whispered a soft soprano.
Delia cocked her head for a moment, then smiled and answered. “I am pleased to meet you, too.”
The ghost smiled and let go her hand.
“That is about all they have had time to practice,” the computer whispered. “They spent most of their time modifying the transfer unit.”
Delia looked out the viewing port at Europe. Italy was missing. So was the rest of the Mediterranean. A glacier-crusted mountain range rose in its place.
Something’s wrong with Earth, but just try telling her.
She ran a hand through her hair and smiled. “What next, you overgrown calculator?”
“Nothing. We shall complete the mapping orbits around Earth, pick up the shuttle that carried to the surface a few hardy explorers in anti-gravity suits, then return to the Sphere.”
“Have they met with representatives of Earth?”
“There are none.”
She was silent for a moment. She had not realized that the war had been that bad.
“How about the Belt? Trans-Plutonian orbit? The Öort layer?”
“Delia-” For once, the computer had to pause to search for the right words. “Delia, when Virgil connected the random number generator to the coordinate plotter, he transferred Circus Galacticus to several distant loci. I could not shut down the board because of reprogramming by Jord.”
Jord? she thought. Virgil?
“When we appeared inside a debris belt surrounding the Sphere-the only remnants of the People’s planets after they constructed the shell-micro-explosions damaged the transfer board and I was able to incapacitate Virgil. During those transfers, we had traveled a very great distance.”
“All mankind couldn’t have died! There have got to be human beings somewhere!”
“You are looking at them, Delia.”
“What?” The image of the wraiths before her began to swim, to drift as sinuously as they.
“We transferred over a billion light years. As near as the People and I can determine, they are indeed a race evolved from Earth settlers. One of many, according to them. They are very grateful to me for finding their cradle world.”
She began to smile and cry at the same time. Some of the beings moved toward her, concerned, their hands rising and falling helplessly.
“Then it’s all right,” she said through a sob. “That means we made it out after all. To the stars… to-”
“Did you ever have any doubt, Delia?”
“A billion years!” Some of the People covered their ears. “We’re alone. Where’s… Where’s-His name, his name-you said it once.”
“Virgil?”
“Yes! Virgil! The one I took from DuoLab. The one who saved me from Jord. Jord was… Where’s Virgil?”
Right here.
She whimpered and grabbed at her head. “No God no please no.” She propelled out of the chart room, blinded by tears.
“You killed him,” the computer said.
“No.”
“I leeched the RNA and picotechs out of his body and injected them into you.”
“No.” Yes. “Why?”
“I could predict no certain end to this slaughter in which you three indulged, so I exercised the option of consolidation. And while the picotechs were outside Virgil Baker’s brain, I endeavored to-”
“I’m alone. Alone!” She raced through the corridor, her arms straining to pull her and guide her. She breathed in labored, sobbing gasps. Her head thundered. “A billion years away from anyone!”
“It does not matter. There are new worlds to see, and the People will care for you.”
“As a fossil!” Something roared inside her ears. A kaleidoscope of colors shimmered at the center of her vision, spreading outward. She no longer felt the handholds, nor the bulkhead against which she slid to a stop.
Alone in blackness, she thought. I am alone.
No.
I hear you, but you’re not part of me.
I am, Dee. You have to learn that as I learned.
Jord?
I am Jord and I am Virgil. After the first day, I was never two separate entities. It was merely an insane battle against the truth. One that kept proving fatal.
I am Delia. Delia Trine. I was born in Denver, February twenty-eighth, Twenty Eighty-
And you are also Virgil and Jord. I am Virgil Delia Baker. I am Delia Jord Trine. I am Jord Delia Kinney. I am you and you are we and we are me and we are all togeth-
No!
Why not, Death Angel? You’ve seen Nightsheet, the ghost of humanity. We shall never die.
You’re still mad!
No, Delia. Mad Wizard is most probably dead by now. Now the rational side of Jord moderates Virgil’s mad side, and Virgil’s gentle nature neutralizes Jord’s violent streak. See? I can talk about them, now. I can see myself from both sides. Now, you’re a third perspective on my consciousness.
It’s all blackness. Can’t you see where we are? Darkness and desolation.
That’s just catatonia. Relax and allow us to merge.
I can’t.
You will…
Delia Diana Trine felt the presence of the other two, as if they were all together in a lightless room. Thoughts and feelings touched her like fingers from the shadows. They caressed her with a lover’s tenderness.
I was born and I was born and I was born.
I meet now, eons late, at the gateway to the Universe.
It stands between me and the door, waiting for a sign. Now I know. I step up and tell it-him, her, whatever its changing aspect is-I tell it that we don’t want each other. That we were never meant to walk through the gate together. That I wanted no field of sleep, no rest eternal. It nods, surrendering so easily I think it must yearn for its own peace.
And I see myselves.
Chapter Sixteen
The Infinite Corridor
Delia Virgil Jordan awoke in the medical bay. Everything seemed dim. Thoughts came slowly to her. Sensations felt duller. She drifted among the loose bed straps as in a dream.
Virgil Delia Jordan awoke a short time later. He looked across the room at her and blinked sleepily. His hair flowed in golden cascades around his neck and shoulders down to his waist. His smooth skin was whiter even than Delia Virgil Jordan’s. Her own hair, black and silky, spread weightlessly away from her naked form.
“From here, our consciousnesses will diverge. Even now, with your shifted perspective of five meters, your mind is receiving different information than mine. We aren’t one anymore.” He smiled. I wonder what I’m feeling like inside her now. It’s not you anymore, though.
“How many tries did it take?” she asked, unbuckling and floating away from the bed.
“Only one,” the computer answered. “The People are quite adept at genetic reconstruction. They recovered a suitable cell of Virgil’s from the disposal tank and set it up for cloning, duplicated the picotechs and RNA, and even threw in a few innovations of their own. I transferred eleven-and-a-half light years out and back, so you are the same age. I thought you might appreciate it.”
Virgil Delia Jordan laughed giddily. “So who’s in control?”
I am, of course. We three.
“I would suspect,” the computer said, “that there might be a Virgil-dominant personality in Virgil’s body and a Delia-dominant personality in Delia’s.”
“No,” the pair replied, almost in unison. “I am one.”
He looked at her. “Virgil, Delia, Jord… Three can go into two evenly.”
She laughed. “I thought the same thing.”
“There’ll be a lot of that going on for a while.”
Virgil D. Jordan climbed out of bed to gaze approvingly at Delia V. Jordan. “Shall we go say hello to the People?”
She returned his gaze with one of inner calm and peace. “I was just about-” she stopped and laughed. “I hope this mental synchrony wears off quickly.”
“It will. You don’t really want it to, though, do you?” So lovely, Delia, so pure and so fresh.
“I know. And I know you know.” Virgil, Jord-untouched by hate, by death, by time.
This is the code, my love, the ultimate code, the final closeness we all searched for.
And none of them suspect. Not the whole truth, anyway. Not Nightsheet, not Master Snoop, not Wizard…
She smiled, her blue eyes misting. “A billion years have passed. We’re all alone in a whole new universe.”
He reached out to touch her hand. “I’ll be with you. Forever.”
THE END
About the Author
Victor Koman is the author of eight novels and is at this moment working on his ninth. A native Californian, Koman wrote the underground classic millennial-noir novel The Jehovah Contract and the medical thriller Solomon’s Knife. Both novels won the Prometheus Award in their respective years.
The Jehovah Contract was written in 1978 and ’79. It was first published in 1985 – in Bavaria (by publisher Heyne Verlag) – as a German language paperback titled Der Jehova-Vertrag. Ray Bradbury says of Koman’s novel, “The Jehovah Contract has a fascinating concept, imaginatively delivered,” and of Koman, “Would that there were a dozen more writers like him in the field.” Solomon’s Knife was written in 1988. Politically potent, it is a medical thriller and courtroom drama that shatters the moribund philosophies clinging to the abortion dilemma and creates a radical fusion of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice forces when a new medical technique threatens to make abortion obsolete. Franklin Watts published the hard-cover in 1989 and it won the Prometheus Award (making Koman the first two-time winner) in 1990. A German translation, Der Eingriff, came out in 1991 from Goldmann Verlag. He co-wrote (with Andrew J. Offutt), two novels in the Spaceways saga: #13, Jonuta Rising! and #17, The Carnadyne Horde, published by Berkley Books in 1983 and 1984. Both were issued under the house name “John Cleve.”
Koman’s short story “Bootstrap Enterprise” appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and was noted by critic Ellen Datlow as one of the best stories of 1994. His stories have also appeared in Fred Olen Ray’s Weird Menace, Paul Sammon’s The King is Dead – Tales of Elvis Postmortem, Ed Kramer’s Dark Destiny II and Dark Destiny III, as well as Kramer’s and Brad Linaweaver’s Free Space.
His novel, Kings of the High Frontier, won the Prometheus Award in 1997, making him the first three-time winner of the solid-gold prize. The novel was the first exclusively Web-available novel to win such an award…and went on to earn a spot on the Preliminary Ballot for the Science-Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s prestigious Nebula Award.
The Magazine of Fantasy amp; Science Fiction calls Kings “an intriguing, exhilarating, thought-provoking and, yes, sprawling novel that brings back the sense of wonder that drew so many of us into science-fiction in the first place.”
A community activist with a quixotic sense of what’s important, Koman was instrumental in preventing the destruction of Disneyland’s last bubble-topped Mark III monorail (“Old Red”), generating a one-man public relations campaign that resulted in nationwide news coverage. The Walt Disney Company subsequently saved, restored, and converted the historic monorail fuselage into a street-legal promotional vehicle. Koman has also appeared as an extra in several films, including Star Trek – The Motion Picture, CyberZone, Nightshade, Rapid Assault, Mom’s Outta Sight, X-Ray Kid, Billy Frankenstein, and Little Miss Magic (in which his actress daughter, Vanessa Koman, played the title role). He lives in southern California with his wife, Veronica, and daughter, Vanessa, as well as their cat and goldfish.
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