We're like flies to it, Stella thought. And it pulls off our wings for sport. We never even had a ghost of a chance.
“I did find your companion's efforts mildly diverting,” the being continued. “Disguising himself in one of my pawn's suits was amusing, however futile. And he did score a few points.”
The holoscreen's view changed to another corridor, showing several Scaley bodies strewn here and there. “My pawns are efficient fighters but lack the ability to distinguish an opponent armored just as they. Your friend's strategy caught them off guard. In truth, because he moved so quickly and blended in so well, I thought even I had lost him briefly.”
Pawns ... amusement ... score a few points ... strategy ... Reviewing the enemy's words, Stella was struck by how much they suggested a “game,” a word the alien had actually used. She glanced again at the figure frozen before the hypnotic pattern device, at George, who had been caught just as surely as she.
Only for George, she knew, there would be no rescue. No one would save him from the mind trap which this thing casually called an “amusement” and “imager.”
“What do you want?” she said, her voice sounding feeble in the gigantic bow.
“What do you think I want?” it whispered.
She glanced about at the Scaleys, and then at Brett and Morner, who stood with expressions of vacant adoration. “I think you want to be worshipped,” she said. “You want mindless robots to make you feel important.”
Laughter broke upon them in dark, myriad waves. “And so you shall. Within a small spacetime indeed you shall all worship me as your God.”
“NEVER!” Thunderheart stepped forward, shaking his fist at the huge, beautiful eye in the flowing sluglike body. “My oath is sworn to Emperor Kolanera, who holds my life in his trust. You are offal, excrement that deserves only to be despised!”
Laughter sounded again but this time, to Stella, it sounded angry. “Your group's primary and secondary languages are so odd to me, so thoroughly irrational. I find your species’ interest in games and strategy fascinating and commendable, yet they coexist with such maudlin and functionless sentiments. Sentiments, of course, which have already proven hollow. As you see, your companions quickly found a new icon for their devotions.”
It must be telepathic, able to absorb our knowledge without our even knowing. Stella reached out to stop Thunderheart, but he stepped closer to the alien's shifting, ever-changing form.
“Nothing in this universe could compel me to forswear my sacred trust,” he said. “Kolanera is my Lord. To me, and to all his sworn liegemen, you are a base, cowardly, depraved maggot. You are Scaley shit spawned by a degenerate race of bastard mutants whose diseased sons cohabit with your blind whore-mothers to produce a plague of abominations.”
The words went on, a rich, elaborate, and seemingly endless litany of epithets used by the Emperor's Arm to denounce the enemy and show their contempt. Thunderheart, in his anger, apparently did not see that this thing had created the Scaleys and was something entirely different.
When Thunderheart finally ceased speaking, the voice that answered seemed higher and less intense. It took Stella a moment to determine what the change meant, which was that for the first time, the alien sounded excited and expectant.
“So, you think that nothing can weaken your allegiance, compromise your lofty principles?” It laughed, a skin-crawling sound that filled Stella with a crushing sense of loss. She thought of her father's funeral, when she and her mother had watched him lowered into the ground forever.
As the Scaleys watched, Thunderheart took another step forward, halting less than a meter away. “Let me just touch you, and I'll show you what honor is.”
A susurration, like midnight wind or ice on graves. “I am waiting,” it said, its body for the moment still.
Thunderheart took another step. Reached out.
And then the alien's pearl-white skin changed, seemed to roil.
Kolanera appeared, his delicate, childish features forming out of nothing on the alien's body, a three-dimensional image as real as life itself. Thunderheart caught his breath in disbelief.
“My Lord!”
“He's stealing it from your mind!” Stella said. “Ignore it.”
She stopped as the boy emperor's features broadened and aged. Within seconds he was a young man in his prime. Then he was middle-aged and growing older.
“Such a short-lived race,” the alien said as Kolanera withered into senility, his wrinkled features pleading for help.
Then, from the holoscreen of the alien's skin, the aged emperor laughed in contempt at Thunderheart, a cruel, soundless cackle, and spat in his face.
“Is this what you worship?” the alien mocked in turn. “Your race has terms for such frail, ephemeral creatures. I believe one is ‘mayfly.’ You will find that my glorious wings are immortal.”
It's insane, thinks it's divine, Stella thought. But with such power to transmute others’ thoughts and transmit them from its own body, why shouldn't it think so?
“Touch me,” the alien coaxed, its tone soft, mesmerizing.
Thunderheart complied, placing his hand directly upon the alien's bloated white surface.
“What are you hiding, my brave soldier who insults me so courageously?” it said. “What secret wound does my gallant warrior harbor even now that seeks to destroy him? Let us see more clearly.”
The nacreous skin roiled and changed again. Thunderheart stared, and then snatched his hand away.
On the alien's skin, Thunderheart's empath-family fought and died. One by one, Stella saw their deaths reenacted just as Thunderheart had glimpsed or perhaps sensed them. An enemy beam carved through a faceplate, and a mouth silently screamed.
“What will you be, my empty orphan, without them?” the alien said. “Even now, you begin to wonder. That is your secret, deepest, growing fear, for you suspect that you are already nine-tenths dead.”
“NO!”
On, or in the alien's body, a soldier fell to his knees. Stella saw him look up and recognized his features through his faceplate.
Thunderheart.
“Join me,” the alien whispered, its voice a silken caress. “Swear allegiance to me and I shall give you a new closeness to humble and eclipse what you've lost. I promise you the stars and all the galaxies you can count. We'll see them together, Thunderheart.”
Two meters before her, Thunderheart trembled. The enemy was using all its will against Thunderheart's in an effort to usurp it. Slowly, Thunderheart turned to look at her. He looked like a man poised on the brink of damnation.
As Sloan's tense breathing sounded in her ears from the Spaceranger, Stella opened her lips. “Send it back to hell where it came from, Thunderheart. Kill it.”
Thunderheart moaned, and then whirled. Leaping into the air, he shot his foot out with the lethal precision of the emperor's trained, elite corps. The blow struck the alien cleanly....
And passed through!
Incredibly, the alien opened to receive him, then closed behind, swallowing him whole. Through its translucent milky surface, Stella could see Thunderheart fight in its bowels, lash out with expert thrusts of arms and feet.
Then the alien's surface turned opaque, and Thunderheart was gone.
“What the hell ARE you?” Stella shouted. “WHY do you do this?”
“Shall I show you?” She saw its swollen red tongue slither in its gaping mouth. “Then come.”
Something touched her mind, a presence. Come into me. Stella shivered and stepped back. She tried to repel it, only to feel its essence invade her mind. As they joined, she realized her mistake.
The alien wasn't an “It.” Nor, despite one of Thunderheart's insults, was it an hermaphrodite.
What the alien was, despite his urging her to come into him, was clearly and undeniably male.
More gently this time, the alien reached out and touched her mind. Don't resist me. You have sensed and understood me from the beginning, haven't you? From t
he first time you saw me there has been a bond between us.
No! She screamed inside.
Not with your conscious mind, perhaps, he answered, but at some deeper level.
In her mind, she opened her mouth and tore at his body, ripping whole chunks free.
You will come into me as your companion has, only closer. As close and deep as my thoughts of you.
Fiercely, she spat out gobbets of his flesh, his alien flesh, and fed him her hate in return.
Come into me. Come with me. I will take you to the All-Mother.
She gripped her fists. I'll tear the bitch's heart out!
Impatient laughter like the death of worlds. She does not have a heart but is as different from me as I am from you.
“She's still a bitch!” she screamed even as he began to stir her. Everything Thunderheart said about you goes double for HER.
You are wrong, he whispered. Let me show you.
And he did.
Aeons passed as a vital race called the Seeds of Time climbed up from the primordial mud and reached its proud pinnacle. She saw...
Oh God.
Decline. Over a billion years, two billion, and then three as evolution took them, a race primarily consisting of males, back to their origins. Limbs turned vestigial, and then disappeared. Families and culture withered. Though their numbers dwindled, their brains didn't atrophy. They continued to develop in profound if narrow ways, reaching supreme heights as their technology achieved for them virtual immortality. There was only one problem.
The great dark opened in her mind, seeded by distant stars. Space awaited, and there was all the time they could want to explore it, with the All-Mother as their guide and general, as their queen bee-hive master who alone was not decadent, who alone was not infinitely bored by the prospect of eternal life.
“Do you see?” he told her. You can join us, the Seeds of Time, and share these wonders with me.
His mind lay over hers like the casual arm or leg of a lover, possessive but loose enough so she could do as she wanted. She felt a touch like soothing fire in every cell. Close to him, intimate in a way beyond words, Stella realized he was giving her a choice, that he wanted her to accept him of her own free will.
Be in and with me forever. We will explore this universe and others. I shall show you eternity, Stella!
Her name on his mental lips drove her to her knees. She swayed there as her body approached orgasm and beyond, a new pleasure that transcended description. Oh God, what was happening to her?
I want you to come willingly, Stella. Say you will come. Say you will come with me.
Her thighs opened before his vast plea. All those galaxies ... to be with him forever.
No.
With an inner curse she cast him off. “No. You're dead inside. Tired and bored with your endless existence. You can't make me save you by being a plaything, a new diversion for your jaded mind. I won't! Your race is finished, has lived its span and must pass.” She rose to her feet and chiseled her words with contempt. “Even if your race could rule the stars, you are still pathetic. I pity all of you, especially your precious All-Mother!”
She felt him withdraw, a lover whose rejection embraced his entire race.
“You cannot say that of her. She is blessed.”
“Then why do you want to die?” she screamed. “Why is your deepest wish only to escape this life you hate? You called Thunderheart nine-tenths dead. What are you?''
“No. You do not understand.”
“Don't lie to me. You said it yourself. We share a bond,” she said. “I know what you are.”
“No! Come with me and I shall show you that you are wrong,” the alien said. “Together, we will share the universe.”
“You're ashes inside,” Stella snarled, “a desolate wasteland. You have only your pitiable emptiness to offer me. I spit on it.”
Silence. She waited.
“You know nothing,” he finally answered. “I was wrong to think we shared anything. You are of an inferior race doomed to extinction. Between us there can be no relationship save that of conqueror to conquered. In the future we shall crush you with even greater ease than we have already.”
“You shall be crushed,” Stella challenged. “You're old, once mighty but now wasted and worn out. Accept it. Find some cemetery and bury yourselves in it. We are a young, vital race and this galaxy belongs to us.”
Silence followed again while Stella wondered how and why and in what way she understood this being. Despite her reluctance to admit she shared anything with him at all, she knew he had been right. There was a bond of some kind between them.
“It isn't wise to play games with a master gamesman,” the alien said. “I have given you a look at me; now let us share your secrets. Perhaps we can determine if they justify your arrogance.”
Stella glanced away at Nick, then at Brett and Morner, who stood in catatonic calm, waiting for their master's summons. Last, she scanned the dozens of Scaleys who surrounded her. What had the alien called them: Pawns? It was a word stolen from their own human language to define her crew's future slavery.
“So you won't speak, even though I know your thoughts? Even though I know your fears, what you dread most to have exposed?” Harsh laughter grated in her ears. “Then let me share it with your followers, see if it inspires their admiration.”
“Stella,” Sloan whispered in her ear from the Spaceranger, “what is he going to do?”
She swallowed, remained silent.
The alien's body changed again, and new images formed. She saw herself descend the circular stairs on Warren and join Jack Faust at the filter tank, saw the tank explode with Faust falling through the air in a rain of scalding death. Then Doug Shane joined her and spoke into his comlink. As they left, they approached a salmon-colored pipe overhead.
No.
She tried to close her eyes but couldn't. The alien held her, and as she watched, her old self died again. She saw the radioactive iodine descend in a lethal shroud, and though there was no sound, it was real to her, it was the very thing. She experienced it again just as it had happened, powerless as the alien raped her mind for all to see. She relived the painful operations that had saved her life and made her a freak, endured her recovery in the weeks that followed. And as she watched, one thought above all seared her mind: Please, Please, don't let him show that. Please, don't let them KNOW.
“Still so haughty, my stubborn one?” the alien said, his voice rising. “Then behold.”
Slowly, teasingly, the one scene she did not want them to see appeared on the alien's skin. She saw her cabin on the Spaceranger. She was standing in it, beside her open berth. And she was ... naked.
NO.
Another figure appeared, also naked. Male and tall. Dark-haired, muscular, and beautiful.
Jason.
“You think he'll want you, Stella?” the alien mocked. “Someone who is not even a woman? An artificial construct, a cyborg lie? Do you think he will love you, come into you with lust and desire as I asked you to come into me, and do so without loathing, without despising you?”
She watched the scene unfold, knowing that Jason was watching from the other ship, and that Sloan and Lee and so many others were observing her disgrace as well as her psychic defilement. Here, for all to see, were her innermost shames and desires laid bare for everyone to trample and wallow in, and above all, to pity.
In the scene, she was kissing Jason passionately and he was kissing back. She watched herself caress and stroke his back and firm buttocks, press herself against him. Then Jason was picking her up, carrying her lightly to her bed, placing her upon it. It was just as she'd imagined it when she was alone, lying in her bunk. Only now she wasn't alone.
Desperately Stella sought a way to resist this rape and invasion of her psyche. What could she possibly do? There was nothing to stop it!
Wait. What about ... a paradox?
Tell me, she shouted in her mind, if you can refute Dahlmer's Paradox.
>
Dahlmer's Paradox?
Yes. She struggled to concentrate, to blot out her shame and terror. Dahlmer's Paradox. The concept formed, and then faded. She summoned all her strength and felt it coalesce again. Since between here and the most distant sun an infinite number of points exist, it must be impossible for you to reach it. Yet your ship can do so easily. HOW is that possible?
Amused contempt slapped her mind. I shall not be distracted by such a pathetic little trick, the alien thought, yet the images on his body faded and grew fuzzy. Within seconds Stella could no longer tell which figure was Jason's and which was hers.
HOW is that possible? Stella repeated. An infinite number of points must be passed, yet you can reach that sun easily.
On the alien's writhing, wavelike skin, the images wavered and their resolution blurred still more. Stella could feel the alien thrust the paradox forcibly from his mind and focus on her own. Instantly the images on his skin sharpened. Before her, Jason threw his head back and laughed. Though soundless, his scorn for her was clear. For Stella, gripped in the rigid vice of the alien's will, it was as if she actually stood in her cabin experiencing her disgrace. Jason gestured at her body, indicating its falseness, his own disgust and revulsion. She wanted to die.
Something happened to the display of her cabin. She saw the door shake, then shake again as if someone were striking it violently from the other side. As the images trembled, Stella felt the Scaleys press behind her in concern.
“What is this?” the alien said, somehow aware of the change on his skin. “Who is interfering? Is it the one called ‘Nick'?”
Stella managed to turn and look at Nick. “No, it is not you,” the alien said. “You lack the will. But there is no one else it can be.”
The door broke and a figure burst through. He stood there breathing heavily, looking at Jason with hate-filled eyes.
George Darron.
“No, it cannot be. My imager trapped him!”
Stella glanced from George on the alien's skin to the ‘imager’ in the corridor before which George stood in his stolen armor. Or was it George?
Beyond Those Distant Stars Page 8
