Lyta looked around. There were now thousands of the creatures moving into position on all sides. Even armed, she knew she could take out only a few of them. If they struck with a coordinated attack, she would be hopelessly overwhelmed. Bitten, beaten, and stampeded to death.
She could feel them preparing to strike, felt the growing agitation in their unified thoughts.
There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and she was nearly out of time.
But not out of ideas.
She closed her eyes again and concentrated. Hive minds seemed almost supernatural, but there was always a core element somewhere. Thoughts didn't come randomly into existence; they all had to start somewhere. She visualized the thought patterns in the lifeforms around her and focused on tracking them back to the source, the beginning of the thought.
Come on, damn it, focus. The Vorlons had altered her, enhanced her abilities to an extent even she didn't fully understand. I can do this.
"One other thing," G'Kar said, stalling for time. If the entity could sense Lyta in motion, then she must be ready to take action. It might help to distract the entity, and while he was at it ... learn something.
"What is it?" the elder asked.
"A question. Since the dawn of recorded time, my race and every other has turned its attention to understanding the universe, to discovering the ultimate meaning of our lives. You have an advantage—you can bring the unified collective consciousness of an entire planet to the process. So I ask: Have you solved that question? Have you touched the unknowable?"
"I ..." The elder paused, seemed momentarily to lose focus. Then he shook off the distraction. "Yes, we have. When we became conscious, it was our first thought: Who are we? And where did we come from? We needed to define ourselves against the universe. So yes, we did ask that question, and after years spent dwelling on this one question, we finally received an answer. We know the meaning of all of this, the importance of..."
The elder paused again. Looked at G'Kar. His eyes widened. "The other..."
"Lyta?"
He nodded. "She ... is not like the others. Stronger. We had thought she was the same."
"You were wrong."
The image came into her thoughts: Buried deep in the planet's upper crust, a kind of bacteria, a microscopic lifeform that had all the classic traits of individual neurons ... it evolved with the other native lifeforms, infected them over the course of millions of years, created a symbiotic life cycle ... took root in their own neural relays until they reached a kind of critical mass, until they were answerable to and controlled by the greater neural biomass.
There were miles and miles of the bacterial matter coiled far beneath the surface, where it was warm, and moist, and safe.
Correction: where it believed itself to be safe.
She struck with a massive telepathic attack. She felt the hive mind reel under the assault, feel it struggle to meet her attempts to disorient it and shred its neural patterns. It was unprepared—it had never thought it could be attacked in this way.
Eyes shut, she heard the creatures stampeding toward her, propelled by fear. Kill her, kill her, do it now.
She knelt, dug her fingers into the dirt, and pierced the hard ground with her thoughts. She was sweating, shaking, but refused to pass out. Break the neural link, overload the faux-synaptic pathways, neutralize the electrochemical transmissions, break, overload, neutralize, break, overload, neutralize ...
Far below, something massive and moist began to tear.
Blackness surged upward, rising behind her eyes.
In her mind, a planet screamed.
When she opened her eyes again, G'Kar was standing over her. They were back in the Na'Toth, and she was covered with biosensors. She tried to sit up, but the world kicked slantwise beneath her.
"Don't move," he said. "I found you on the ground and carried you back. Your heart stopped for a moment, and I thought you weren't going to come back."
"... the animals ..." her voice was thin, a whisper. Her head was pounding, and there was the coppery taste of blood in her mouth. Must've popped a vein, she thought casually.
"They were wandering around aimlessly when I found you. Whatever joined them together, it is now gone. Can you tell me what happened?"
Between careful sips of water, she did.
G'Kar digested the information for a moment before saying, "You killed an entire planet?"
"It pissed me off," she said, and shrugged. "I killed the main body of the telesymbiotic biomass. But I don't have any illusions that I got all of it. It'll build back up to critical mass eventually, but it'll take centuries before it can exert enough influence to pull together a new planetary hive mind on the scale of what we saw here."
She focused on him. It hurt. "I could feel you talking to the entity toward the end," she said. "You helped me get in by distracting it. I don't know what you asked, but it must have been one hell of a question, because nearly all of the entity was focused on it. What was it?"
"Oh ... nothing important," he said, fighting what she suspected was an ironic smile. "Nothing important at all."
With that, he turned, headed back into the cockpit, and fired up the engines.
For the next several minutes, the only sounds in the ship were the roar of the engines, and G'Kar in the forward compartment ... laughing.
Space, Time, and the Incurable Romantic
by
J. Michael Straczynski
~2560 - 2593~
Much to his own surprise, Marcus Cole breathed deeply.
His first conscious thought was I'm alive, followed closely by Why am I alive?
He blinked open his eyes. Bright white light stabbed at him, and he closed them again.
"Dim the lights," someone said.
He tried a second time, and managed to keep his eyes open. He was in an operating theater, of that much he was certain. Several Minbari doctors stood over him. At least one of them wore the cloak and pin that identified him as a Ranger, same as Marcus, serving in the shadows, serving the Alliance.
He struggled to recall how he had gotten here. The last thing he remembered was learning that Commander Susan Ivanova had been mortally wounded during the Earth civil war, and was dying. Against orders, he had rushed to her side and used the alien device found by Dr. Stephen Franklin — an instrument of capital punishment designed to transfer the life-force from one person to another — to use his own life-force to bring her back from the edge. He did so even knowing the cost he would pay for his actions.
I love you, he had said.
And there, in her arms, he had died.
So where, and why, the hell was he?
He struggled to sit up, but his arms shuddered and collapsed beneath him.
"Try not to move," the head Minbari physician said.
"Why can't I sit up?" Marcus asked. "My arms — "
"Atrophied. You haven't used them in ... well, in a very long time."
"How long?
"We'll begin rehabilitation at once, artificially stimulating them around the clock, and that should help get you on your feet soon, but — "
"How long?"
The physician hesitated, looked to the Ranger behind him. "Tell him, Tranall," the other Minbari said. "He has been trained as anla-shok, he is a Ranger. He can bear the burden."
The physician nodded, and turned back to Marcus. "You have been in cryonic suspension," he said. "Commander Ivanova ordered your body frozen in case one day science might find a way to restore you to life."
"Presumptuous, I suppose, but that's always been her way," Marcus said. "It's getting so a man can't even die heroically without someone spoiling all the fun. I'll have words with her about this, just you wait."
The two Minbari exchanged a curious look.
"Speaking of Ivanova," Marcus said, "where is she? I can't imagine she'd miss this."
"I'm afraid she is dead," the Ranger said.
Marcus struggled for words.
"I don't understand, I mean, I saved her ... I mean, I did save her, didn't I? The device did work, didn't it?"
"It did," the Ranger said. "That is a historical fact. But you must understand: by the Earth calendar, the event you are describing took place nearly three hundred years ago."
Over the coming weeks, as Marcus recovered, he learned all that had happened in the days and years following his cryonic suspension. The information was given out piecemeal, when and as the doctors felt he could handle each new piece of information.
Susan Ivanova had become captain, then continued up the ranks, becoming an Earthforce general and then, finally, Anla-shok na, head of the Rangers under the leadership of Interstellar Alliance President Delenn of Minbar. She had served in that capacity for the rest of her life, expanding the roster of membership in the anla-shok to include representatives of every member world, and instituting a system of honor and self-sacrifice that was unparalleled to this day. He was told that there were over half a dozen statues and memorials to her work in this one city alone.
She had eventually arranged for his cryotube to be shipped here, and from time to time, visited him in his long sleep. According to Tranall, those visits were still whispered about among the medical staff, some saying that she used to talk to him as if he were still alive. "But there are no records, anywhere, of what she said," Tranall added.
Her orders, and those of Delenn, were that his body was to be kept intact and in cryonic suspension for however long it took to find a way to restore him to life.
It had only happened now, three hundred years after the fact, because a recent expedition to the Rim had found the ruins of the alien civilization that had produced the energy transfer device. In among the ancient documents and records, they had at last found the information they had been searching for.
"And what am I supposed to do now?" Marcus had asked at the end of his final briefing.
"What they had all wanted for you," Tranall said. "Go on living."
"What about everybody else?"
"We have kept your revival a secret. We thought it would be better that way. It will give you time to adjust without the press of others demanding your time. The chance to talk with someone who actually knew President Sheridan, and Delenn, and Anla-shok na Ivanova is ... Tranall's eyes fixed at a distant point, then finally returned to Marcus. "There are no words. But we shall respect your convalescence. After that, of course, we will have enough questions to fill an ocean.
"And you need not worry about your future or your livelihood from this point on," he continued. "A trust fund was set up two hundred years ago. There are enough credits in that account to serve the needs of several thousand men for the rest of their lives. You will have everything you need."
Marcus nodded, didn't say No, not quite everything.
When he was strong enough, Marcus left the hospital and walked out into the Minbari capital city of Yedor. Little had changed in the three hundred years since he had last walked these streets. The crystalline spires and towers were as coldly impressive as they had always been. There were more humans and other aliens out on the streets than he had ever seen before, but that was understandable since Minbar was now the seat of the Alliance. The Rangers had become an interstellar legend of their own, their honesty and objectivity heralded on hundreds of worlds. If a Ranger was called in to arbitrate a dispute, their decisions were utterly unimpeachable.
And when force was needed to resolve a dispute, they were a feared power. A power that was applied only when absolutely necessary, and never for political or personal gain.
I guess it was all worth it after all, he thought, but found himself distant from it all, feeling like a reverse historian, seeing things that proceeded from events he knew, but with which he had little personal involvement.
Everyone I knew is dead.So where am I supposed to fit in with all this? He supposed he could rejoin the Rangers, catch up with all the latest training, but somehow it just wasn't the same anymore. When he'd first joined up, it was a new thing, the revival of an ancient tradition for purposes of fighting an impossible war.Now it had become status quo, had become everyday. The great war was long over, it was ancient history.
As was he, Marcus ruefully decided.
After several hours, his wanderings had taken him to the Memorial Park, where the bodies of heroes, dignitaries, rangers and former Alliance presidents (at least those that hadn't mysteriously vanished) had been interred.
Yeah, like this was an accident, he thought. He checked the directory and found what he knew he had been searching for without ever saying it aloud, even to himself.
Susan Ivanova's memorial rose up before him in a tower of crystal and stone whose layers wove together in delicate patterns that caught the cool white light of an ordinary day and broke it into a million brightly colored pieces. How utterly appropriate a metaphor, he decided.
He entered the memorial, and his breath caught in his chest as he saw her face floating in the air above the quartz-like crypt that contained her body. Just a memorial holo-image, he told himself, but it was her face from the days he had known her, and he could not look at it without pain.
He stepped closer, the gaze of her face following his movement. "Hello, Susan."
There was no reply.
"Why'd you do it?" he asked, sitting on a bench beside the crypt. "I mean, if you hadn't done it, we'd be together by now, in whatever passes for an afterlife these days.
"Of course, I don't believe in an afterlife, and you know that — knew that — so I suppose that could've had something to do with it." He shook his head. "You always thought you knew better than everybody else. Well, fine. First you were alive and I was dead, and that wasn't right at all, so now I'm alive and you're dead. Yes, this is such a better solution, isn't it? You ask me, I think you did it for revenge. If you had to go through those years by yourself, then by god you were going to make sure I did the same even if that meant hiring people to chase my body clear across infinity."
He looked up at her face. It hadn't changed.
On the other hand, maybe you actually loved me, he thought, but could not bring himself to say.It felt presumptuous.
He wondered what she had said to him, all those years when he was in frozen sleep. Was she telling him that she missed him? Or rebuking him for being stupid? He would never know.
He thought of her, sitting alone for all those years. Did you do it for me? Because you missed me or because you felt guilty because of me? It's not fair. I knew I was on a fast track to a bad death ever since my brother died; how could I go on knowing that I'd failed him? I couldn't fail someone again. Especially not you.I wanted you to have one more chance to find happiness. And you didn't. You had the work, but you always had the work, that's not the point.It's not right that you were alone.It's not right, it's —
"Hello?"
Marcus sat up, startled at the voice that echoed in the memorial. A Minbari stood in the doorway, clutching a handful of flowers.
"I'm sorry if I alarmed you," he continued. "Do you mind if I—"
"No, please, go right ahead."
The Minbari nodded and moved to the front of the crypt, where he placed the flowers in a waiting receptacle.
"Who sent them?" Marcus asked.
"Sent?" The Minbari shook his head. "You are a Ranger by your clothes, yes? I thought you would know."
"I've been out of town a while."
"Long ago, President Delenn ordered these placed here every day. The words of Delenn are still followed, and will always be followed." He arranged them carefully, then stepped back. "Do you know much of Ivanova?"
"A bit," Marcus said.
"Then you are a follower of her ideas?"
"You could say that."
"That's good," the Minbari said. "Then may I assume you have been to the Voice?"
Marcus studied him. "The what?"
"The Voice. Shortly before Ivanova passed away, a pi
cture was taken of her mind. Well, it's not really her mind, not technically ... it's a full study of all the neural pathways and memories and information she held at the time, encoded and preserved for future historians, physicians and scientists. I think the nearest human equivalent would be a life mask, but this is an impression, a picture, taken of a person's mind.
"It can't create new thoughts, obviously, because a mind needs a soul for creative life to exist, but it's a wonderful resource. I've only been there once myself, but I found the experience most ... exhilarating."
Marcus paused for a long moment before asking the one question he knew was about to change the rest of his life.
"Where can I find her Voice?"
When Tralann had said that all his monetary needs would be met many times over by the trust fund, Marcus had not been paying a great deal of attention. Now he had a reason to find out just how much was there.
He was, even by his standards, suitably impressed.
Next came the purchase of a jump-capable private ship. He was surprised at how small they had gotten.In the years before, the White Star had been the smallest ship capable of jumping into hyperspace without the assistance of a jump gate, and that still required a fairly substantial crew. Now they came in one—or two—person flyers that were a fraction of the size of a White Star.
Ivanova's Voice was stored with the Voices of several hundred other historical figures at the Sirius Nine Neural Archives, operated jointly by the Earth Alliance Historical Society and PsyMed, a pharmaceutical megacorp based on Centauri Prime.
The Archive had been set up there twenty years ago as a tax write-off by PsyMed.Sirius Nine was a little traveled colony with even less to offer tourists or businessmen. It needed something with prestige to invite travelers, and the Neural Archives brought academics from dozens of worlds.
Babylon5: The Short Stories Page 7
