by Rachel Bach
This place was different than the others on the station. It was less like a tube and more like a knob that had been divided into two unequal sections by a long and, surprisingly for this place, opaque wall. We were in the smaller section, a curving room full of glowing trees and sitting pillows with the usual stars visible through the clear walls, which only made the black wall separating us from the abbot more mysterious, like a black hole. The gravity was even lighter in this place than in the tube where we’d entered, and I had to be careful not to throw my armor case as I slung it off my shoulder. “When can we see him?”
The woman frowned. “As I said earlier, we don’t restrict our flow to—”
“We’ll just wait,” I said, cutting her off before I had to listen to all that again.
The woman flashed me what probably passed for a dirty look in this place, but before she could say anything else, Rupert took her hand. “Thank you very much, Solara,” he said, giving her a slow smile. “We appreciate your guidance.”
And just like that, the woman forgot I existed. “No need for thanks,” she said, turning her attention fully to Rupert as she clasped his hand in both of hers. “It is my pleasure to welcome new minds into harmony. If our paths cross again, you are welcome to attend one of my classes on cultivating oneness. I think you’d do very well. You seem to have a very flexible mind.”
“Thank you for the offer,” Rupert said, his low voice full of promise while I fought to keep from rolling my eyes. “Hopefully, I’ll see you soon.”
The guide smiled warmly at him and left, hopping up to grab the edge of the door in the ceiling where we’d come in. The moment she had a good grip, she pulled herself up, using the change in gravity to send her body flying back out into the enormous space with such grace I knew she had to be showing off.
“Flexible mind,” I muttered as Rupert returned to my side. “That’s not all she wanted to flex.”
“You catch more flies with honey,” Rupert said, putting an arm around my shoulders. “You should try it sometime.”
“No thanks,” I grumbled. “I don’t want any flies, and I’ve got better things to do than attend classes on how to talk like a space-case.” I glanced up through the transparent ceiling at the huge structure above us. “Though I have to say, this place isn’t quite what I expected. Where did a group who doesn’t even believe in timekeeping get the money to build something like this?”
Rupert shrugged. “Dr. Starchild holds many patents.”
That made sense. Patents meant corp money, and lots of it. I was about to ask Rupert what kind of patents when the sound of a door opening made us both turn.
What came next just made me feel awkward. I’d expected another guide, or maybe even the abbot himself. Instead, Copernicus Starchild walked out through the door, his pale face lighting up when he saw me. “Deviana!” he cried, hurrying forward to shake my hand. “I’m delighted to see you’re all right!”
I let him take my palm, not at all sure what the proper etiquette was when meeting someone you’d tricked, drugged, and abandoned the last time you were together. But if Nova’s brother harbored any ill will about the way I’d ditched him, I couldn’t see it. Nic looked every bit as delighted as he claimed, his smile large and genuine. He did not, however, look at Rupert.
“I’m happy to see you as well,” I said. And I was, sort of. “I’m glad you made it home.”
“It seemed the best choice, all things considered,” Nic said, guiding me toward the door. “Montblanc ended up on lockdown, and when we heard you’d died on Reaper’s ship, well…” He faded off. “Death might be only an illusion, but personally, I’m very glad you’re still with us.”
“Me too,” I said honestly, glancing at the door. “So does your dad know about—”
“Oh yes,” Nic said, suddenly fearful. “I told him the whole story. But you have to understand, we thought you were dead.”
“No, no,” I said. “That actually makes things easier. Can we see him?”
I’d been trying to reassure him, but if anything, Nic only looked more uncomfortable. “He’ll see you,” he said, darting his eyes toward Rupert. “But he refuses to see the Eye.”
Rupert stiffened beside me, but when I looked up, his face was passive and calm. “Go ahead,” he said. “This is your visit, not mine. I’ll wait here.”
I didn’t like the idea of leaving him, and I definitely didn’t want to go in to meet the plasmex doctor who’d designed Maat’s prison without backup, but there was nothing for it. “I’ll be out as soon as I can,” I said softly. And then, after a brief hesitation, I rose up on my toes and pressed a quick kiss against his lips.
He caught me, deepening the kiss so swiftly I almost dropped my armor case. When I pulled away at last, Nic was determinedly looking everywhere except at us. “Um, this way,” he muttered, walking to the door.
I gave Rupert a final smile and walked to the sleek, solid, black glass sliding door. He watched me the whole way, his eyes on mine until the door closed, leaving me sealed inside the strangest room I’d ever been in.
Other than the wall behind me and the ceiling that connected this room to the zero G amphitheater above, it was completely made of clear glass. There were no lights, no large furniture, just open space. The tunnel we’d fallen up to get here must have been longer than I’d thought, because I was high above the rest of the station’s snaking tubes with nothing but open space all around me. Even though I knew logically that there was glass between me and all that space, staring at the sweep of the open universe with no suit to protect me was overwhelming. Looking up, I couldn’t help feeling tiny, an insignificant speck, and the only reason I didn’t press my back into the wall was because I had an audience.
In the middle of the huge starry room, a man was sitting on a pillow. He was sitting in the dark, but I could see his shape because there were phantoms crawling all over him, lighting him up with their soft, bluish radiance. I was trying to make out his features through the glow of the little phantom sitting on his forehead when he reached out and turned on a light.
The soft, yellow light canceled out the phantom’s blue radiance, revealing a man sitting on the same kind of meditation pillows Nova used. The lamp was set on a kneeling table in front of him, as was a chessboard, the pieces already arranged for a game. But I noticed all of this only on the fringes, because the rest of me was gawking at the man himself.
My first thought was that this couldn’t possibly be Dr. Starchild. Maat had been locked up for nigh on sixty years. That meant the person who designed her prison would have to be eighty at the very least, but the man in front of me didn’t look any older than Rupert. As soon as I thought it, though, I realized I was being stupid. Of course he looked young. He’d worked directly with Maat, which meant he had a symbiont. He could be a hundred years old and not show a day.
He did look uncannily like Nova, though. He had the same pale hair and bleached complexion, like he’d never seen the sun, which didn’t seem so far-fetched anymore now that I’d seen where they lived. He had her smile, too, wide and friendly, and I started to smile back out of habit when he held out his hand, gesturing to the pillow opposite him. “Hello, Deviana,” he said, his voice calm and dreamy. “It is always a pleasure to share space with any companion of my darling Novascape and Copernicus. I was just about to start a game. Do you play chess?”
My smile vanished. Why did all these former Eye types keep asking me that? “No,” I said, “I don’t know how.”
“Would you like to learn?” he asked. “It is a very enjoyable mental exercise. There are many good moves that might bring victory. The game lies in picking the best one. It makes for a challenging puzzle.”
“I don’t much like puzzles,” I said. “I—”
“You don’t?” Dr. Starchild replied, looking dismayed. “How unfortunate, because as I understand it, you’re neck-deep in one at present.”
I took a deep breath. “With all due respect, Dr. Starchild, I’m
not here to play games. I’m sure Nic told you already, so you should know that I have a plasmex virus that’s killing me and might just kill everything else if I can’t get it under control. Rupert said you might be able to help, and we’re short on time because the Eyes are after us, so if we could just cut to the chase, I’d really appreciate it.”
Dr. Starchild lifted his wispy eyebrows, and then, to my astonishment, he picked up his game, set it aside, and turned back to me, folding his hands on the now empty table. “Very well, Deviana. I would never wish to upset your harmony. Tell me, then, what do you want me to do?”
I didn’t actually know how to answer that. To buy time, I set my armor case down by the door and walked over to kneel on the pillow across from him. Unlike the ones in hyperspace, the phantoms crawling on Dr. Starchild skittered away like normal when I got close. That made me feel a little better before it made me feel worse. Had my life really gotten so crazy that I had standards of normal behavior for invisible bugs?
I shook my head in despair, clearing my throat as I got to the point. “What I want depends on what you can do, I guess,” I said. “But let’s start with the part where I’ve got a killer virus.”
He nodded. “So you want me to save your life?”
“Yes,” I said, and then I sighed. “No, well, it’s not that simple. Did Nic tell you what the virus does?”
The doctor’s look grew distant. “As much as he knew, though I feel I should point out that it’s not really a virus by the strictest definition. What the xith’cal created is more like a corruption. It spreads through plasmex in a chain reaction, picking up strength as it grows. The more plasmex a creature has, the bigger it blows. You have very little plasmex, so it was never able to achieve critical mass in you, so to speak, which is probably the only reason you’re still alive.”
I nodded frantically. That sounded right to me. I was also very happy he’d started talking more like a normal person. “It didn’t kill me, but I can use it to see and kill phantoms. So, what I’d ultimately like is to pull the virus out of me safely, but in a way that would still allow the Eyes to use it as a weapon to replace the daughters.”
His face grew dour. “You want me to synthesize a weapon from your virus that can replace the current daughter system and wipe out the phantoms?”
“Not wipe them out,” I said. “They’re not evil monsters. They’re more like animals.” I stopped, trying to think of how best to put this. “I don’t want to kill all wolves. I just want to make a gun that lets farmers protect their fields.”
As I spoke, Dr. Starchild started to smile. “It stabilizes my calm to hear you say that,” he said. “When you arrived with Charkov, I was worried you’d been misinformed. The Eyes know full well that the phantoms are not malevolent, but it makes their lives easier to demonize them.” His smile turned bitter. “Monsters make much better villains than lost animals who are blind and frightened.”
“Rupert’s not like that,” I said quickly. “At least, not anymore. He’s helping me against them because he wants to find a better solution. That’s why he brought me to you.” I held out my hands. “I’ll freely submit to any tests you want. I just want this virus to be used the right way.”
“And you think the Eyes won’t do that?” Dr. Starchild said. His voice was no longer dreamy now, but sharp, like he was testing me. “They have much better facilities than I do, especially when it comes to making weapons. I’m just a humble hermit.”
I had to fight not to roll my eyes at that last comment. “Of course I don’t trust them. The Eyes are the ones who thought it was acceptable to brainwash little girls into being child soldiers in the first place. They took kids from their families and used them up with no thought for the damage they were doing because, hey, everything’s okay if it’s in the name of saving the universe, right?”
He chuckled. “And you do not share this belief?”
“Hell no,” I said, eying him. “Honestly, I don’t know if I can trust you either, but I don’t have much of a choice. I have to do something. I have in me the means to end a whole lot of suffering, and I’d be a terrible person if I didn’t do my best to see that through. So if you can help me at all, even if it’s a long shot, I’d really appreciate it.”
Dr. Starchild breathed out a long breath and looked down at his hands, still folded on the smooth wood of the small kneeling table between us. “I am honored by your faith in my abilities,” he said after a pause. “Unfortunately, Deviana, I cannot do what you ask.”
He raised his head again, looking at me with deep sympathy. “You are dying,” he said. “I can see it in your aura. There is no mistake. The corruption has permanently altered you, becoming part of your inherent plasmex, and I cannot cleanse it.”
His soft words were like shots landing in my body. I’d thought I’d steeled against this, that I’d accepted my death long ago, but hearing it spelled out like that brought forth an unexpected surge of survival instincts and anger. “Aura?” I snapped. “I can see phantoms, but I don’t see any auras. How do you know for sure that I’m dying? Maybe you’re just seeing what you want to see?”
I was snarling by the end, but Dr. Starchild didn’t seem ruffled in the least. “Aura reading is a complex art that requires years to master,” he explained. “It takes a great deal of plasmex to even attempt the technique, so of course you with your tiny spark of plasmex can’t ‘see’ auras because we don’t see them at all. They are an expression of pure plasmex completely disconnected from our physical senses. You see phantoms, Deviana, because your plasmex is no longer human.”
The chill I felt at his words doused my anger like a bucket of snow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I can’t say for certain what you are,” Dr. Starchild replied. “Other than a unique anomaly, which isn’t actually so unique when you consider the infinite possibility of the universe. For example, Maat is also a unique anomaly. Like you, her plasmex was changed by the xith’cal, though her change was not accidental. She was the sole survivor of Reaper’s experiments to turn humans into plasmex-generating vessels when Caldswell found and freed her during one of his slave raids.”
Caldswell had mentioned that much before, but the doctor wasn’t finished. “This was back when Brian was a simple Starfleet captain and I was the plasmex researcher assigned to him by the Scientific Council to study xith’cal experimentation,” Dr. Starchild went on. “Had the timing been different, Maat might have been rehabilitated, but then we discovered she could see the strange deep space phenomena we’d been having problems with, the invisible force that disrupted electricity and ate ships. She was actually the one who first named them ‘phantoms’ when she was trying to describe what she saw.”
He stared up at the stars, lost in the memory. “I thought they were fascinating, Brian thought they were dangerous, but Maat always said they were beautiful. She used to cry when we made her kill them.” He frowned, and then shook himself, like he was waking up. “Anyway, what I’m trying to communicate is that you are an oddity, Deviana. By all factors, you should be dead, and yet you live.” He shrugged. “The universe is infinite and strange. We cannot predict, only marvel at what it creates.”
I closed my eyes with a curse. I hadn’t even realized I was still holding out hope until it withered. “So there’s no way to make a weapon out of this thing?” I asked, fighting very hard to keep my voice from cracking. “Nothing?”
“I could not speculate,” Dr. Starchild said. “I can’t do it, but that doesn’t mean the Eyes couldn’t find a way. However, since the lelgis would never permit such a weapon to be created, the likelihood of any research, however enthusiastically undertaken, reaching an actionable point is very slim.”
“But there’s a chance,” I said, grasping.
“Oh, there’s always a chance,” Dr. Starchild admitted. “However, unless they find it in the next month, it will be a moot point.”
“Next month?” I repeated dumbly. “I’m going to die in a month?”<
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He gave me a sad look, and his voice grew gentle. “I’m sorry, Deviana. I wish I had better news, but at this point, the corruption is simply too deep. The only beings who could possibly cleanse your plasmex now are Maat and the lelgis queens, and even then, doing so would require them to take the corruption into themselves in the process, essentially trading their life for yours.” He shook his head. “The infinite is always possible, but it does not seem likely they would make such a sacrifice.”
I disagreed. “But Maat wants to die,” I said. “That’s why she came to me in the first place.”
Dr. Starchild scowled. “Maat spoke to you?”
“She wanted me to kill her,” I said. “With the virus, actually.” I took a sharp breath. “This is perfect. She could take the virus from me. She’d die and I’d live. We’d both get what we want!”
“It would also kill all the daughters and forever remove the chance of making more,” Dr. Starchild pointed out.
My shoulders slumped. Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about that tidbit in my desperate grasping. Still. “Is there any way around that? If I give the virus to Maat, the Eyes are already set up to study her. We’d be replacing one weapon with another, only this one isn’t actively suffering. Could we do that? Infect Maat but spare the daughters?”
He frowned, thinking. “Perhaps, but this is all a moot point. Even if you could snap your fingers and make every phantom vanish, the Eyes would never let you kill Maat. Above all else, they will never let her die.”
I glared hard at him. Caldswell had said much the same thing when I’d tried to get him to agree to let Maat go, but he’d refused to explain why. At the time, I’d let it slide. Now, though, I didn’t have the time to waste. Dr. Starchild knew the Eyes’ secrets, and if I was going to die for this bullshit, I was at least going to know why.
“Why can’t Maat die?” I demanded. “It’s not just because she’s the only one who can make the daughters, is it? The lelgis have something going on with her, too, so what is it about her that’s so important?”
