End of the Circle

by Jack McKinney

  The thought troubled her for a moment. What if the Robotech Masters had somehow eliminated their Achilles’ heel? Surely Earth would have been devastated far worse than ever Optera was.

  But it had not happened; it was not meant to. She dismissed the thought; it was not time to be morbid.

  And yet she felt sure the thoughts and feelings of all aboard were being probed and in some cases manipulated.

  Lisa hurried to get a word in before Lang could; the scientist looked half-ecstatic, half-deranged with all that new insight. “Rem, we must stick to the point. What is the nature of newspace, is there really a relief ship on the way, and are all personnel safe at the moment?”

  She meant the children, and no one begrudged her the preoccupation. Rem replied, “Just so. I believe the story told by Gnea and Sergeant Dante is entirely true. I believe that all that has happened is tied in with the master plan of Haydon.

  “The Regess told you both that she, which is the same as to say her entire race, now desires a return to the Invid’s pre-Zor state on Optera, isn’t that right?”

  Angelo responded, “Yes, sir,” and Gnea inclined her head, making her malthi-winged helmet glitter.

  “Very well. Ladies and gentlemen, Zor’s dream has come to pass,” Rem said. “The fleet you sent to Earth must have driven her from it in a supreme mating with the Protoculture itself. But for whatever reason—I suspect because the Regess was forced into it by violence—this transcendence has not worked out as intended.

  “We find ourselves in a situation of danger not only to ourselves but to the entire universe. I believe that unless some solution is found, by the nature of Protoculture, all of the Creation that we know will vanish as if it never existed.”

  At his end of the table Lang watched and listened to Rem with a fascination and a sense of dismay that had been growing for months.

  The clone had been scarcely more than a boy when the REF had first encountered him. Now, grown and filled out, he was very much the image of Zor, albeit with some slight genetic alteration. But even more tellingly, in the wake of his clonesong dreams, he spoke with the voice of Zor—with an utter certainty about the nature of Protoculture and the fate of spacetime.

  Lang studied Rem’s face. It was the same countenance Lang had first viewed decades ago on the other side of the galaxy, ageless and graceful. Then it had stared out of a screen and had spoken incomprehensible words. Now it lived before him.

  Lang listened carefully to what Rem was saying, but within the scientist there was a pall, a feeling of total defeat.

  Despite all his assumptions and all his efforts, it was not Lang that newspace was trying to contact, to use and deal with. The mantle of ultimate Protoculture destiny had fallen on Rem.

  All Lang’s hopes were dashed. It had been his creed that the Protoculture had sought him out, that he was at the center of the Shapings. Now he saw the cruelty of it, that he was no more a luminary of the Shapings than one of the children or Sentinel fighters, perhaps no more than that overmuscled tank sergeant, Dante.

  It couldn’t be! He’d come too far. He refused to be done out of his place in the Shapings. But how to avoid it?

  Lang was a past master at concealing his feelings. Nothing showed on his face, but inside he felt an icy thrill of hope and dread.

  The Shapings had come full circle, and in some ways the pattern was ripe for repeating. Or if not, at least Lang’s place in the great cycle would be secure.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Those critics contending that the personnel of SDF-3 were unforgivably blind—in not seeing the implications of their own behavior in terms of the “birth trauma” nature of their transit into newspace—are nothing but (God forgive me) lard-bottomed armchair generals.

  Given the stresses of what they were going through, the emotional wringer pressing out every one of them, and the demands of constant strife and danger, the SDFers’ confusion was almost inevitable.

  Only children, fools, and those who have never known hardship could argue otherwise.

  Pastor Basil Yanamamo,

  Pipeline: Experiences in Birth and Death

  “Karen, wait!”

  He had finished postflighting his Alpha and had rushed so that he wouldn’t miss her, but somehow she had completed her task even quicker and left the flight deck.

  As he caught up with her in the passageway, Karen spun on her boot heel, tapping her toe, arms crossed, features composed in heavy weather warnings. “Make it brief, Jack.”

  He trotted to a stop, feeling something that would have been akin to déjà vu if he had not known exactly where he’d felt it before: every time they had squabbled, disagreed, clashed, or vied for the upper hand.

  “Aah, it’s no big thing. Just thought we could hit the mess if you want some company for dinner.”

  She was not looking any kindlier. “Don’t you want to find out what’s going on at the meeting?”

  “You mean what went on; I heard it’s just breaking up. But by the time we grab a bite, there’ll probably be an intel summary we can get a peek at.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Then maybe stop for one or two at the officers’ club? Possibly a dance?”

  Actually, that was just what he had in mind. He answered warily, “Why, is there something wrong with that?”

  “Hah! Honestly, Baker, there’re cockpit canopies harder to see through than you are!”

  “Whoa—ho—wha—” was all he got in.

  “This is so typical,” Karen said through clenched teeth. “We’re stuck in newspace or wherever it is, possibly forever, and suddenly it hits you that we should be seeing more of each other.”

  “Well, yeah, that just happens to be the case,” he said lamely. Then he heard laughter and realized that there were some enlisted ratings standing back by the hatch, ordnance men and women taking a break before going back to rearming the mecha.

  “Haven’t you goddamn BB stackers got anything better to do?” he railed at them. When he looked back, Karen was gone.

  This time he had to grab her sleeve to stop her, and he thought for a moment she was going to sock him. At least they were out of anyone else’s earshot.

  “Have it your way, Karen! Let’s go back to the cats-and-dogs routine.”

  “My way? I want you to think about that, Jack. Remember back when we were stranded on Praxis and you got so domestic? Even though you put on a front when there was anyone else around. You were the one who was all set to plow the north forty, lasso goats, and raise us’ns up a crop of rug runners. Right?

  “Then we get off the planet and back into the war, and your priorities revert. That’s your pattern. When you were laid up after Burak gored you, you were actually acting human for a while, but once you were up and around, ugh!”

  Jack had his mouth open to object, but Karen had been saving this one up for a long time, and he didn’t stand a chance. “And now we’re beached here in newspace and you’re making an approach run. Well, spare us both the thrill, Baker!”

  “You knew I was insecure and thoughtless when you got me to fall in love with you!” he hollered.

  Karen uttered a wordless ki-yi and tried to take his nose off with a snap kick. Jack just managed to fall back but tripped over a stanchion and whapped the back of his head on a viewport rim, going down.

  He sat there seeing stars. “King’s X! What’re you, working for the Invid?”

  She was torn between concern and the urge to do mayhem. “Oh, Baker, damn your eyes!” She knelt by him. “Here, let’s see.”

  “No! Ouch! You’re just trying to finish the job.”

  “Stuff it, you big baby. You didn’t even break the skin.” She released him and let him get up by himself.

  “You made your point, Karen. You don’t want me to talk to you unless I’ve already talked to you several times earlier that same day.”

  “Stop trying to twist things, Jack.”

  “Yeah, all right. I bet you think that effing Sean
Phillips is more considerate, right?”

  He rubbed his head gingerly, gazing out the viewport. There were more stars than there had been a while ago. “D’ you suppose she’s bringing in biota?”

  “What?”

  “You heard what Dante said about the Regess. All these stars she’s making appear here in newspace— Are there life-forms on them? Maybe even intelligent ones? Is she ripping them off from someplace else or just thinking them up?”

  “You’re asking the wrong woman.”

  “Mmm. Okay, look, how about dinner a week from Friday?”

  “I don’t think they have Fridays in newspace, Jack.” She turned toward the officers’ mess, more slowly this time.

  He fell in beside her. “How about breakfast tomorrow? In my bunk?”

  Bowie, the Muses, Sean, and Marie had stayed well back during the meeting. There were plenty of astonishing revelations but not really much anybody could say or do about anything—certainly not the ex-UEG fighters or the siren Muses.

  As the meeting began to break up, Sean yanked Bowie’s sleeve and pointed with a sneaky smile and half-lidded eyes. Angelo Dante had wandered over to the hatch just about the time Gnea, her attention seemingly elsewhere, had eased back out of the crowd.

  A look passed between the two. Gnea left, and Dante hung back, scanning the compartment to see if anyone had noticed them.

  “Don’t let him see you watching!” Sean hissed. The ATACs and Marie quickly glanced elsewhere. Musica and Allegra gazed at them uncomprehendingly, then at each other, so the effect was the same. A moment later Angie was gone.

  “Angelo Dante?” Bowie boggled. “No, must’ve been something that wants us to think it’s Angelo Dante.”

  Musica had caught on, and she was smiling, too, slipping her arm through Bowie’s. But Allegra said slowly, “You mean you think he’s not human?”

  Marie Crystal laughed. “Oh, no; he’s human, all right, no matter how he tries to hide it. I bet he and Gnea are gonna Indian wrestle to see who carries whom across the threshold.”

  Sean sighed and made lewd, fishy kissing noises at her until he realized that two senior staff officers were glaring at him. Marie added, “Now that I think about it, though, there’s been a lot of slap and tickle going on since we entered newspace.”

  “If I understood it right, that’s what Lang was driving at,” Bowie put in thoughtfully. “Maybe creating a newspace macroverse is like writing a song. You can’t just haul off and do it cold; you haveta draw on inspiration.”

  That had them all silent and thinking. The loves and attractions of the SDF-3’s complement were only part of the mental and emotional baggage they carried.

  “It occurs to me that maybe we all want to be real careful about what we think and say and do around here,” Marie pondered aloud.

  Perhaps I saw this day coming all along, Lang mused, keying the armored vault module with his spoken password, DNA code, and brain scan. Why else would I have made this shrine to it?

  The vault module had been aboard the SDF-3 all along, transferred there from storage on Earth. The Robotech equipment it held had been removed from the just-crashed SDF-1 within days of Lang’s first encounter with it in ’99. The equipment sat before him now, silent and patient, looking little different from the way it had in the instant when Lang had first seen Zor’s face on its screen.

  He ran his hand along it, the console that had been the nucleus of the SDF-1’s living Robotechnology. It had been replaced by human interface equipment, which had then been set up in a conventional bridge arrangement where Henry Gloval set his strong hand on the tiller of galactic history.

  But the original systemry was here, preserved, inert. Touching it, Lang felt his skin tingle, recalling the unspeakable shock when pure Protoculture, amassed and controlled by Zor’s least comprehensible devices, had flooded through him. It was an event that belonged if not on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, then perhaps on a matrix containment casing, Lang thought ruefully.

  He had kept to himself as much as possible the profound changes the Protoculture had worked in him and his new affinity for it. He was absolutely indispensable to the new Robotech Age, and so his strangeness was overlooked. People hailed him as genius, as savior, yet he’d been confronted every day, from the first crash exploration in ’99 to this moment, with his own shortcomings and fear.

  By long habit he glanced back to make sure the vault module was totally secure. He reached out and tapped a code into a touchpad.

  Zor’s master console came to life.

  Not to full power, of course; there was little Protoculture now, and it all had the unavoidable Second Generation impurities and unsuitability. But the infusion let the alien indicators and displays show that they still waited. He could flood the devices with Second Gen power whenever he chose.

  Up until a short while before, he could have taken a second boost—could have done that at almost any moment over the decades. His powers would quite probably be increased geometrically; the math and research data were promising on that point, just as they led to the inescapable fact that he would die very shortly thereafter.

  Zand had been willing to risk it after that first voluntary exposure to the Protoculture he had taken against Lang’s orders and behind his back. Though neither of them mentioned it later, Lang had been quite prepared to shoot his colleague down in cold blood rather than see him take that next step toward the godhead.

  Most of that stemmed from fear of what the second boost might make of Zand, who was none too stable as it was, of course. But wasn’t there more to it? Jealousy and a refusal to let Zand have something that he, Lang, feared to claim as his own?

  No matter. Zand had had his transcendence, all right. And to hear Dana Sterling tell it, it was all in line with the fear of the Shapings that was almost a religious fervor within Lang now.

  Here in newspace, though, the Shapings had gone awry or petered out or … Lang was not sure what.

  His polestar faith, the Shapings, led him no more. The politicians and the military would go on pretending there was something they could do, but he knew differently. There was only one possible way to save the lives onboard the SDF-3 and, more important, the universe threatened by newspace.

  That route lay in a direct encounter with the Shapings. And the only way anyone would do that would be to raise oneself beyond the limits of mortal power, at least for a single moment.

  Only no one was going to do that with Zor’s equipment, not with Second Gen Protoculture at any rate.

  At least … not as the console was configured now.

  Lang drew his stool closer and sat absorbed in the console. After long minutes he reached for a sensor and hooked it into one of the system’s peripherals. He took up a touchpad and began keying equations into his mainframe, scarcely aware that he was doing it.

  He paused to run his hand along the console in thought, recalling its Protoculture thunderbolt, and almost threw down the touchpad. It was madness!

  There was a sudden flux in the equipment—not unusual; he’d had to jury-rig a lot of the modifications that let it use Second Gen Protoculture. He forgot his frustration and fear, watching rainbow waves of distortion chasing each other across the ten-foot screen.

  Lang did not even need to wonder what he’d see next; he had viewed the recording so many times that he knew the pattern of the static that preceded it.

  He was staring at the ageless, elfin face again, with its wide, almond eyes, framed by a mane of bright, starlight hair. He’d long since memorized the sounds of Zor’s speech of greeting and warning.

  Zor’s recording. Kicked up at random by a meaningless Protoculture hiccup, some might say.

  But Lang took his touchpad back in hand and sat down, staring unblinkingly at Zor. When the recording had run its course, he went back to his calculations.

  All across New Praxis the surface-effect and aerospace vehicles were on the move.

  The Amazons had come there with little agrarian
experience; they’d hunted, herded, and gathered the untended bounty their homeworld offered up naturally. But they had met their new planet’s demands with their innate adaptability and their hard-nosed refusal to give up.

  They raised some of their food in vats, greenhouses, and aeroponic domes, but the key to their survival had been rendering parts of the stalk and roots of the Flower of Life edible (the fruit being deadly to them). They had learned to farm.

  And now they were learning to reap in a way they had never conceived of.

  From every point of the compass the ground wagons, air lorries, and skyboats converged. Military, private, common carrier—every vehicle on the planet had been mobilized by women working to exhaustion and beyond. None had slept since Haydon’s appearance.

  In the main plaza of Zanshar, before the cloning center, the pile of Flowers grew. Every specimen had been carefully scanned to make sure it was unpollinated. All had been bagged in clearseal to ensure that they stayed that way.

  And that raised a troubling point. For some reason the mysterious little Pollinators, whose nature it was to tend the Flowers and who had ranged freely across New Praxis, had disappeared. Some thought that an evil portent, but no one dared voice the opinion.

  The pile of bagged Flowers grew and grew, higher and higher, until it had attained the top step and spilled against the high front doors of the cloning center.

  Bela watched from the opposite end of the main thoroughfare, from the uppermost parapet of her castle. The Amazons’ big orbital freight shuttle was nearly ready to receive the bounty of New Praxis. Cargo pods were already being wheeled into place to transport the Flowers.

  Bela had sent her guards and advisers from her. Silently she watched through the night as Flowers were trundled off toward the shuttle pad. The shuttle lifted off like a morning star for its flight into high orbit and a rendezvous with Haydon IV (how the artificial world had drawn so close without colliding with New Praxis or, at the very least, causing catastrophic damage, no one knew). It would return with the sealed, prefabricated modules that would be activated to form a new Whaashi.