by Rachel Bach
Dr. Starchild leaned back on his pillow, staring up at the stars like he was trying to make a decision. Whatever it was, he must have decided in my favor, because when he looked at me again, his face was all business. “Maat can never die,” he said ominously. “Because Maat is the one who holds the door closed.”
“What door?” I asked.
“The phantoms aren’t from our universe,” he explained. “They came to this place from another, and they did it by slipping through what I can only term a hole.”
“A hole?” I said. “What, like a mouse hole?”
He made a face. “That is a very simplistic way of putting it, but the general idea is correct. It was the lelgis who found the breach first. They saw the phantoms as intruders, dangerous ones. Being almost entirely made of plasmex, the lelgis fear little, but phantoms are made entirely of plasmex. They don’t even exist on the physical plane unless they’ve reached a certain size and made a determined effort to manifest.” He paused. “How much do you know about the oneness?”
“Been there,” I said, which earned me an impressed look.
“Extraordinary,” he replied. “That makes you almost unique. I brush it sometimes in my deeper meditations, but I’ve never been able to truly ascend.”
I smiled. He sounded almost jealous. “It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
He held up his hand. “Please don’t spoil the experience for me. Now, as I was saying, phantoms are creatures of plasmex, even more than the lelgis. They live within the oneness, the unified flow of plasmex that connects all living things. Plasmex is everything to them—it’s what they eat and breathe. It also connects them to each other, allowing communication and, I believe, spontaneous relocation within the physical realm.” He stopped, looking suddenly sheepish. “This is all conjecture, of course. I have no proof since the phantom phenomenon is nearly impossible to study.”
“It sounds right to me,” I said. Eating plasmex would certainly explain why phantoms loved plasmex users so much. Even now, with me sitting so close, the little phantoms were trying to ease their way back toward Dr. Starchild. “But where does Maat come in?”
“Maat was the key,” he said excitedly. “So we have this hole in the universe, right? And phantoms are able to move through it freely. However, since we’ve already established phantoms are made of plasmex, this meant they were also now able to move freely into the oneness, which upset the lelgis greatly.”
“Why?” I asked. “You said the oneness is touched by every living thing there is. What do a few phantoms matter to all that?”
“Ah, but unlike the rest of us, who merely brush the oneness, the phantoms move through it like fish in the sea,” Dr. Starchild explained, his face going grim. “The lelgis consider themselves to be the queens of heaven, custodians of infinite space with the oneness as their private domain. You can see, then, why the phantom’s invasion would upset them.”
As he said this, my mind flitted back to the craziness right after I’d killed Reaper, to the voices in the dark, the lelgis. They’d described themselves as queens to me then as well, guardians of everything. They seemed to think they were gods.
“To the lelgis overminds, the oneness is their pure land,” Dr. Starchild went on. “But when the phantoms began to pour in, they brought their own plasmex with them. The lelgis saw this as corruption and sought to stem the tide, but even they can’t manipulate the fabric of space itself. Repairing the hole between our universe and the phantom’s was impossible, so they had to settle for plugging it. But even this was risky. While any queen could have easily used her control over plasmex to build a wall, doing so would have exposed her to the phantom’s home universe, and not a single one of them would dare risk being corrupted herself to save the others. Being a hive mind, they all knew this, and so they decided to find someone else. An outsider.”
“Maat,” I said.
He nodded sadly. “Looking back, she tried to warn us what was coming. She used to tell me she could hear their voices in the dark, though I didn’t know what that meant at the time. Now I know she was touching the oneness, touching the flow of plasmex itself, and when the lelgis decided they needed a sacrifice, she was the obvious choice.”
“But why did you give her to them?” I said. “It was their problem. Why not tell them to suck it up and do it themselves?”
“Because we had no choice,” Dr. Starchild said tiredly. “At that point, the phantoms looked to be on the brink of wiping out all of humanity. Maat was the only weapon we had against them, and she was becoming more and more unstable. And then Svenya happened.” He sighed. “You have to understand, we were desperate. All the lelgis had to do was hint they had a solution, and we gave them everything. Caldswell handed Maat over to them himself, and when they gave her back, she was changed.”
The way he said that made me shudder. “How?”
“I’ve never been able to figure that out exactly,” he confessed. “Maat was always unstable, but that was to be expected from a girl who grew up as both a xith’cal slave and an enormously powerful plasmex user. Actually, I’d often thought she did very well, all things considered. She could be rational, calm, even friendly when we weren’t pushing her. When she came back from the lelgis, though, she was mad, truly so, and she’s only gotten worse.”
I didn’t need him to tell me that. I’d seen Maat myself. “So that’s why she can’t die. She’s the plug.”
Dr. Starchild nodded. “She is the dam against the phantoms, the wall that stops the tide. Every phantom currently inside our universe came here in the few years the hole was open, before Maat closed the door and blocked the flow. The purpose of the Eyes and the daughters was always cleanup. Their job was to eliminate the remaining phantoms, after which it was thought the program would shut down.”
He ran a thin hand through his pale hair. “I haven’t been involved with the Eyes for thirty years, so I don’t know how that’s going for them, but we always did this with an end in sight. If we keep killing them, so the logic goes, eventually we’ll kill them out. When that happens, the universe will be phantom free and all the Eyes and daughters can retire. But Maat is different. That’s why she can never leave the Dark Star, the Eyes’ space station, which is positioned directly over the tear in the universe where all this began. She was the sacrifice, the queen whose position holds the phantoms in checkmate, and until the game ends, that’s where she’ll stay.”
I let out a long breath. As he’d told the story, Dr. Starchild’s voice had grown painfully bitter. “So you’re like Brenton, then,” I said. “You don’t think Maat should have to suffer.”
He scowled. “John Brenton’s objections were purely personal. He didn’t care that a girl was being sacrificed. He cared that it was her. If he could have traded some other poor soul into her fate, he would have done so in a heartbeat. I, on the other hand, was not a lonely, violent man infatuated with a mentally unstable teenager. I objected to the principle of the matter.”
“But you still went through with it,” I said.
“Yes,” Dr. Starchild admitted. “And I regret doing so. Like everyone else, I acted out of fear. A planet of billions had just been destroyed and we couldn’t even find the monster who’d done it, let alone kill it. We didn’t know where it would strike next, or if there were more. It felt like the end of everything, and when the lelgis appeared like avenging angels to kill the unkillable, there was nothing we wouldn’t do to keep their protection.”
He gave me a bitter smile. “I’ve often wondered if they planned it that way, letting us get a real taste of the phantom’s destructive power to make sure we’d go along without a fight. Now, however, I am no longer under the illusion that we have control over the universe, and I would act very differently if I were given the chance to live those days again.”
I didn’t agree with what had been done to Maat at all, but the way he said that sat wrong with me. “So what would you have done?” I asked. “The phantoms were pouring through
that hole, right?”
He nodded. “Their numbers were increasing exponentially, yes.”
“So you would have just let them keep coming?” I snapped. “I’m not saying Maat should have to stay and do this all alone forever—that’s way too much on one person—but at the beginning, it might really have been the only way. If the phantoms hadn’t been stopped, they would have overwhelmed us before we figured out another solution.”
If I’d been in charge back then, I would have bargained for a time limit on Maat’s duty and then put every plasmex expert in the galaxy on figuring out how to make a wall that didn’t require a person to hold it up. Stopping the initial flow of the enemy was vital, but once we’d gotten ground, there was no reason to let Maat keep fighting all by herself other than laziness and selfishness. That was how I saw it, anyway, but from the look Dr. Starchild was giving me, I don’t think that was what he had an issue with.
“The greatest illusion is the illusion of control,” he said softly. “We humans are little more than specks of dust in the infinite sea of the cosmos. To protect ourselves from that dreadful truth, we have developed an elaborate fiction that we have control over our lives. But our species is not alone in this. The lelgis are worse, seeking to control and protect something that is infinitely larger than their greatest efforts. Trying to preserve the oneness is like trying to preserve time, or gravity.”
He lifted his head to the stars. “This is why the lelgis chose us as their pawns. We both share the delusion that we can control the universe, but we can’t. We think we have power, but we don’t, and in trying to assert what we do not have, we only hurt ourselves. In the end, all we can really do is accept our powerlessness and be at peace.”
I stared at him, disbelieving. “What are you talking about?” I said. “We can’t control everything, sure, but there’s tons of stuff we have enormous power over. I’m not saying he did the absolute right thing, but if Caldswell hadn’t handed Maat over to the lelgis, the phantom situation could have gotten completely out of control. Our entire race could have been wiped out.”
“It would not have been the first,” Dr. Starchild said with a shrug. “The tools of evolution are time and death, Deviana. The second greatest illusion is that of our own importance. Our lives are not sacred; the universe does not care about little specks. We in our hubris care, and when we try to fight the universe, we will always lose, because we are finite, and the finite can never defeat the infinite. Maat may endure in her suffering for another hundred years, but eventually she will fall, and the phantoms will come anyway. We know this, and yet we keep fighting. We suffer and strive and do great evil to each other to preserve lives that will end in the blink of an eye. Even you.”
I gave him a curious look, and he explained. “I can’t enter the oneness, but even I can feel when an entire xith’cal tribe dies in an instant. Your virus is the only thing that could do that, and yet here you are. Did you do it to save your own life? Kill thirty million thinking, feeling individuals so you could walk away?”
I gritted my teeth. “They were xith’cal.”
“Xith’cal have a right to live,” he said.
“You don’t know shit about me, old man,” I yelled. “I did what I felt I had to do at the time, and I don’t have to explain my actions to you.”
“You’re right, you don’t,” he said. “Because I do not sit in judgment, Deviana. Not of you, nor of Caldswell, nor of anyone.”
“You judged Brenton,” I snapped.
“I stated fact,” he corrected.
I threw up my hands. “So are you saying we should just do nothing? That I should have given up and rotted in Reaper’s cell and let him use me as a weapon because, hey, I’m mortal and I’m going to die anyway? Bullshit. If that was how I thought, I’d never get anywhere. Would you sit back and do nothing if Nova was on a planet that was about to be overrun by phantoms?”
“It is possible to love someone without giving in to attachment,” Dr. Starchild said. “I love my children dearly, but I accept that I cannot control their fates. Why else do you think I allowed Nova to go with Caldswell?”
I shot him a murderous glare, and the doctor sighed. “I am sorry to have offended you, Deviana. I did not mean to make you upset. But you came to me for aid, and I am doing my best to give it to you. The truth is that we are a constantly evolving picture, and the phantoms are part of that now. If we try to fight that, all we do is cause more suffering for ourselves.”
I bared my teeth. “I am not just going to give up.”
“Acceptance is not the same as giving up.”
I growled deep in my throat. I was past fed up with this guru bullshit. But instead of getting out of my way like someone with a healthy sense of self-preservation, Dr. Starchild leaned over, snatching the smaller of the two crowned figures from the white side of his chessboard.
“In chess,” he said, holding the game piece up between his fingers, “the queen is the most powerful piece, but even she is still just a piece on a board. For all her power, she is trapped by her role so long as the game is in play. If she truly wishes to be free, she must change the game.”
I rolled my eyes. “What does that mean?”
“You said yourself that the phantoms are not monsters,” he replied, placing the little queen on the table. “With that in mind, it might behoove us to cease treating them as such. If we bend and adapt, work with rather than against, we might discover that the wall we perceive at our backs is actually a foundation for something else entirely.”
I shook my head. “If you want me to talk to them, I already tried. Doesn’t work.”
“Maybe not yet,” he said with a smile. “But you must agree that it’s time to change our approach. For far too long now, we have been sacrificing our pieces in pursuit of a victory we cannot obtain and which may not even exist. If we continue in this fashion, if we keep clinging to our dream of control, then we have no future but failure.”
He sat back on his pillow as he finished, looking at me calmly like he expected me to throw myself at his feet and bless him for his wisdom. But I’d had all the lecturing I could stomach, and I stood up instead.
“Thanks for the sermon, Doc,” I said. “But you forget, I’m not in this for the long game anymore. I might be a speck in the maelstrom, but this speck means to go out like a supernova. So if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to go and see if the Eyes can’t do something with this virus. Because while they might have their heads up their asses about it, at least they’re doing something, not just sitting around in a pretty space station in the middle of nowhere pontificating about acceptance while people are dying.”
I lifted my chin, daring him to come back after that, but Dr. Starchild just gave me a warm smile. “Then I wish you nothing but harmony and fulfillment in all your endeavors.”
When I gave him a frankly skeptical look, his smile only widened. “We may not agree on all things, Deviana Morris, but you are still clearly a brave woman who is trying very hard to do the right thing. Just because your path is not one I would follow myself does not mean I cannot respect it or wish you well. Though I would appreciate it if you would tell Eye Charkov to stop beating on my door. It’s upsetting Copernicus’s calm.”
I blinked. I hadn’t heard any beating. I couldn’t hear a damn thing, actually, but when I turned on my heel and marched over to open the door, Rupert nearly fell on top of me.
He caught himself at once, lowering the fist he’d clearly been using to pound a hole in the amazingly soundproof black glass. He looked at Dr. Starchild, then at my scowl, but though he was clearly curious, urgency won out. “We have to go,” he said, reaching down to grab my armor case. “Now.”
“Why?” I asked. “We got company?”
Rather than answer, he stepped aside so I could see the Terran battleship that was waiting just outside.
“I thought they’d search the planet before chasing down the final jumpers,” he said quickly. “I didn’t realize they’d be
on to us so quickly. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I told him, taking my armor case back as I led him out into the waiting area where Copernicus was still hovering. “This actually saves time.”
Rupert gave me an odd look, but I didn’t explain yet. Instead, I gave Nova’s brother the “scram” glare, which cleared the room nicely. Copernicus scrambled out without another word, hurrying into his father’s room and shutting the door behind him. The moment we were alone, I told Rupert the truth.
“I’m done running,” I said, my voice impressively calm and determined as I set my armor case on the floor by my feet. “The doctor can’t help. My options are wait for the virus to slowly kill me, die to the lelgis, or let the Eyes have a shot. So I’m going to have a talk with whoever’s on that ship and make sure that this thing”—I thumped my chest—“pays its dues for all the trouble it’s caused, and I don’t want you to go with me.”
Rupert jerked like I’d hit him. “What?”
“I want you to run,” I said sternly. “I’m going to be dead soon no matter what, but there’s no reason you should suffer, too. I’ll distract them. I’m the primary target. You take the Caravaner and get out of here.”
As I spoke, Rupert went very still, his eyes narrowing. “And where would I run?” he said quietly, reaching up to press his long-fingered hand firmly against my chest. “My heart is here.”
I sighed. “Rupert.”
“I am a defector,” he went on like I hadn’t spoken. “I am no longer taking orders.” His lips curled into a warm smile. “I am free to follow my heart wherever she goes.”
“It’ll be a short trip,” I grumbled, eyes flicking to the enormous battleship outside. Already, fear was burning up my throat. I could face my own death like a hero, but at the thought of Rupert’s, I became a coward. Cowardly enough for the cheap stunt I pulled next.
I snatched my hand down, grabbing Sasha from where I’d lashed her to my armor case. In the low gravity, my anti-armor pistol’s normally oppressive weight was nothing, and my hand shot up like a cork to press her muzzle against the skin of Rupert’s forehead. I would knock him out, get the Starchilds to hide him as a final favor out of my friendship for Nova, and go up to meet the Eyes alone, explaining away the arm I was about to break as an injury from Kessel.
