Four Tomorrows: A Space Opera Box Set

by James Palmer

  “Looking for a cloaked ship,” Rebani answered quietly. “With his wealth, it would not be beyond Arga Cilus to possess cloaking technology for his ship.”

  “There’s nothing here,” repeated Bal, this time more authoritatively.

  Rebani glanced at Bal, who was smiling wolfishly, baring his teeth slightly.

  “If there was a ship here, my Cat’s-Whiskers would have found it,” Bal explained.

  “Cat’s-Whiskers?”

  “A next generation sensor array which I acquired ... never mind how I acquired it,” Bal said suddenly. “Trust me: If there was anything here to find, we would have found it.”

  “Any trace of anything that might lead to Arga Cilus’ ship?”

  Bal consulted his instruments again, and frowned at the reading. “Something small, too small to even be a life pod. Approximately two micrometrons in length ... .”

  “About the size of a man?”

  Bal looked up at Rebani suddenly. “Yes. Why?”

  “It was a man.”

  The Sabour gazed out the clear canopy, and Bal followed the look with his own eyes. Bal watched for long moments, until, a centichronon later, the frozen corpse of Major Plaibus floated past the canopy.

  “He was one of the mercenaries who raided your ship,” explained Rebani.

  “Don’t tell me,” Bal said in a tired voice, holding up a hand in a preventative gesture. “Enhanced senses or some such.”

  Rebani silently nodded assent.

  “Is there anything you can’t do?” asked Bal facetiously.

  The Sabour smiled wanly. “That is a longer list than the one of things I can do.”

  “I’m going to bring him in.” Bal manipulated the controls of the ship, pivoting it slightly, until a grappling beam could pull Plaibus’ corpse into the main airlock.

  Dr. Habûl had a tawny hide of short hair, and, although tall, was hunchbacked, his lanky body draped in simple robes, an under robe of beige, and an abbreviated outer robe of black. A tasseled rope belt was cinched at Habûl’s waistline. Small, tufted ears high on the sides of his head were just visible beneath a cloth headdress. Habûl’s face was mostly jaw, a shaggy beard lining it. His eyes were small and black, and gleamed with intelligence. A short snout consisted of large upturned nostrils; below were wide, mobile lips. Standing in the sick bay of the ship, facing Bal Tabarin and Rebani Kalba, his image was semi-transparent, sent from the hospital ship Hope, where the good doctor had worked for some decades.

  The corpse of Major Plaibus lay on one of the two beds in the small room. Puddles gathered around him as he thawed.

  “This being was killed with a vibroblade approximately thirty nanometrons in length. Death was almost instantaneous due to damage sustained by internal organs, system shock and blood loss,” announced the holographic Dr. Habûl, his voice ragged with age. “I can be more specific about the damage caused by the wound, if you like.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Doctor,” said Bal. “Thanks for your diagnosis. I’ll be seeing you.”

  With a harrumph, Dr. Habûl’s image faded from sight.

  Bal, gazing at the Sabour, said, “It seems fairly obvious what happened. Plaibus took the blame for the beacon.”

  “Yes,” agreed Rebani.

  “It doesn’t look like he took it voluntarily.”

  After a long pause, Bal said, “I’m going to eject him back into space, if you have no objections.”

  “I have no objection,” Rebani said flatly.

  Bal frowned at Rebani. “I thought you Sabours were supposed to be spiritual.”

  Rebani pointed at Plaibus’ body. “That is an empty shell now,” he explained. “His life force has gone to join the Cosmic All.

  “Ejecting a corpse into space means as little to us as disposing of the rind of a fruit.”

  Bal pondered this for a moment, then said, “We seem to be at a loss for ideas. It wouldn’t hurt to check the way station at Baqira, but I don’t hold any hopes of finding anything there.”

  “Nor I,” agreed the Sabour.

  “Our only other option, as far as I can tell, is questioning Arga Cilus’ agent who’s selling pieces of his collection off. But I don’t expect that to amount to much, either,” Bal sighed.

  “No,” agreed Rebani. He turned from Plaibus’ corpse.

  Bal shrugged to himself as Rebani Kalba left the tiny sick bay.

  “On to Gonica, then,” Bal Tabarin said to himself.

  Gonica was but one more day’s travel from the spot where Bal’s beacon had been, and during that solar, Bal Tabarin narrowed the parameters of the search which his computer had been conducting for gems similar to the Sacred Heart. The chime to his stateroom door sounded abruptly, and Bal turned toward the door. “Come in.”

  The door slid open with a slight hiss, and there stood Rebani Kalba.

  “I have an idea where we might find another fragment of the Heart,” the Sabour announced. If the thought were possible, Bal would have called his tone sheepish.

  “Oh?”

  “I can not tell you the name of the planet, or the co-ordinates in space, but I can point you in the direction we must travel,” Rebani explained. Bal had never seen or heard him so uncertain.

  “Where did this idea come from?” Bal asked in a surprised tone. “Yesterday you had no suggestions as to our next move.”

  “I have a feeling. It came to me while meditating,” Rebani explained, anticipating Bal’s next question.

  “Why didn’t you think of this before?”

  “Perhaps I wasn’t listening,” Rebani said, under his breath.

  “What?”

  “We have nothing to lose, since we have no definite destination in mind,” said Rebani.

  Bal shrugged. “That’s the truth,” Bal Tabarin said, turning back to the computer as Rebani Kalba left the stateroom.

  15 In Which a Large

  Shadow is Cast

  The Gonica system had held no clues to the whereabouts of Arga Cilus, and the way station at Baqira, the planet that circled the star Baqir, appeared not have been visited in several weeks, so The Vagabond Lady flew in the direction Rebani Kalba the Sabour had indicated.

  On the forty-third day of the voyage, Bal Tabarin sat at his large desk in his stateroom, surrounded by relics of the past which had been collected in the course of his adventures. Once a young and studious young university professor, he had found that he preferred field work to that of the classroom, and never looked back. He now spent his days hunting relics for institutes of learning, though an occasional lecture was not out of the question. The Corruban limited himself to relics that had previously been removed from their original environs; he would not disturb what could be an important archaeological dig to loot it, and he was not above stealing from thieves to rescue a relic.

  Bal watched impatiently as glyphs from dozens of languages from throughout the Milky Way flashed on the large holovisor screen, remaining there only when one matched one of the glyphs on the gem Bal had found on Jabareen.

  A soft chime sounded, indicating the computer had completed a previously-assigned task.

  Two sets of names and coordinates appeared in small script in one corner of the holovisor screen.

  The first was Covenant, located somewhere off the starboard side of the ship. A short paragraph below the coordinates stated that a gem in the scepter of the Hierophant of Covenant was a likely candidate as a fragment of the Sacred Heart. The description also stated that the scepter was the Hierophant’s symbol of office, and that meant he wouldn’t part with it under any circumstances, if it could be helped. A jihad, or religious war, would likely result from the theft of the scepter, Bal knew. Or, at the very least, a death decree.

  Bal Tabarin was familiar with the planet Covenant; officially known as Coreolus B, it was the headquarters of a formal religion that had been formed thousands of years earlier when the discovery of the existence of intelligent life on other worlds caused a schism in the Roman Catholic
Church on Old Earth. For its part, the church had remodeled itself the Nova Catholic Church, and revised its teachings to include “aliens”. Of course, dozens of splinter groups sprang up, but the Human Fundamentalists was the only one that had survived until the present. They had abandoned Earth millennia ago on a space ark, and the fact that Earth had never been destroyed in an Armageddon hadn’t dimmed their religious fervor over the millennia.

  Bal, for his own part, had never been able to justify the dogma of any one religion, of which there were tens if not hundreds of thousands in the Milky Way. He believed there might be some underlying, unifying concept to the Universe, a religious Unified Field Theory of sorts, but hadn’t heard anyone thus far suggest one that convinced him. He was a scientist, and scientists dealt in observable conditions that could be quantified. Religion was the diametric opposite of Science, being founded on faith in the unobservable, and thus, the unprovable.

  The second set of data described a piece in the Museum of Fusail.

  The hairs on the back of Bal’s neck stood on end when he saw that the co-ordinates of Fusail placed it directly in the ship’s path.

  Bal Tabarin bolted from his chair, and rushed from the room.

  “What do you know about the Museum of Fusail?” Bal Tabarin demanded of Rebani Kalba, who was supervising Josef on the preparation of a Sabour dish in the ship’s galley.

  Rebani’s brows knitted. “I’m unfamiliar with it. Why?”

  “First,” growled Bal, “it’s in our flight path. Second, a gem which may belong to ours is there.”

  The Sabour’s face tensed. “Obviously, the gem is directing our movements.”

  “I’m telling you, something bad is going to happen from gathering these gems.”

  “So we should abandon our search, and leave the gems to Arga Cilus?” asked Rebani dryly.

  “No.” Bal frowned suddenly. “Of course not ….”

  “As I said, I am going to continue the search,” stated Rebani Kalba.

  “I’m worried,” Bal said, wincing visibly as he spoke, as if ashamed to admit his feelings. “I’m not used to this hoodoo, and I don’t like it.”

  “But you want to know, don’t you? You want to know what the gems are, what they mean,” asked Rebani, gazing levelly at his companion.

  “Of course,” Bal spat. “My whole life has been a quest for knowledge, the filling in the blank pages of History. I’m convinced the gems can fill in a whole missing book of the past.”

  After an awkward silence, Rebani said, “The gem may be manipulating your emotions subconsciously, attempting to drive a wedge between us, just as it guided me to another fragment.

  “I give you my word, as a Sabour, that I will cause you no harm in my pursuit of the gems, or as a result of the gathering of the gems.”

  “Like you gave your word to Batrachian about sharing the profit from this venture?”

  “That remark is not worthy of you.”

  “Then I give you my word,” Bal Tabarin said in a casual tone, “that I won’t betray you, either, and, if you turn on me, I will blaze you without thinking twice about it.”

  Rebani Kalba’s face was unreadable at hearing this news.

  “Now that that’s settled,” said Bal, “I may be on my way to cracking the inscription.”

  “Oh?”

  “The inscription isn’t in any one language; that’s why my computer hasn’t been able to translate it thus far,” explained Bal. “In fact, certain words seem to be comprised of more than one language, which is why everyone thus far has been frustrated in their attempts to translate the entire inscription. But parts of the inscription seemed to be translatable in a number of languages. There are several similar legends about mystical gems, and this started me thinking about commonality. I realized all the languages could belong to a group of families of languages. If I’m right, the inscription is in a lost language which was the protoform of several families of languages.”

  Bal looked thoughtful at this point, smiling a grim smile which bared his teeth.

  “Yes?” prodded Rebani.

  “There hasn’t previously been any suggestion that these languages were grouped because they were thought to be native languages,” explained Bal.

  Rebani frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “An outside source had to have introduced the root language on these worlds, one which was present at the earliest stage of language development in these cultures,” Bal exclaimed.

  “The Ancients,” Rebani Kalba said softly.

  “Yes,” agreed Bal Tabarin.

  The Ancients, variously called the Old Ones, The Progenitors or the First Race, were a race or races which had developed and disappeared thousands of millennia before the earliest surviving spacefaring cultures, leaving behind rare, powerful Artifacts which were at best only dimly understood by even the most brilliant minds of the Milky Way. Despite these scientists’ best efforts, no Artifact had ever been completely deciphered, and they largely remained enigmas. No homeworld of the Ancients had ever been discovered, no art, clothing, music, food, written record, vehicles, anything – except the Artifacts, which seemed impervious to time. The Ancients were also called the Engineers, due to these advanced technological devices.

  Artifacts of the Ancients, when discovered, were seized by the Union government, and so highly classified that even the President wasn’t allowed access to them. An unknown number of them existed, and were rumored to possess the power to destroy an entire planet in an instant, or traverse the great distances of space effortlessly. In fact, hyperdrive technology was speculated to have come from an Artifact, among conspiracy theorists.

  For once, Rebani Kalba was speechless.

  “That makes this thing a whole lot bigger,” said Bal. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yes,” said Rebani, finally, eyes hooded. “That could explain the powerlessness I feel when trying to communicate with the gem, why it is able to resist my probes, apparently with little effort.”

  “Are you still sure you want to locate the missing pieces?” asked Bal.

  “More than ever,” Rebani Kalba stated flatly, eyes blazing like green bonfires. “If the gem is an Artifact, it must not be allowed to fall into the hands of beings such as Arga Cilus.”

  “I thought as much,” Bal Tabarin put in dourly. His own feelings on the subject fought amongst themselves.

  On the holovisor screen in Bal Tabarin’s cabin, the matching glyphs of the inscription sat patiently as the final glyph flashed to find a match. Abruptly, a match was found, and the glyphs transmorphed into Standard as part of the translation program. Translated, they read: “the beginning”.

  16 In Which a Songbird

  is Forever Silenced

  Inside the clear glassteel case, the gem seemed to quiver. Bal Tabarin squinted, to be sure, and confirmed that this impression was just a trick of the light.

  The Museum of Fusail had no corners. Its walls and floor were smooth and rounded, giving the structure the appearance of being organic, rather than artificial – grown instead of constructed – and colored a bright white that reflected the light in every direction. With subtle recessed fixtures, this light seemed to emanate from nowhere.

  To Bal, the gem resembled the Sacred Heart. It had the gleaming brilliance, color and inscription of the gem in Rebani Kalba’s possession. He glanced at the Sabour, who studied the gem with hooded eyes. “Well?”

  “It wants out,” Rebani whispered to Bal, in the singular way he had of making it sound as if his lips were next to Bal’s ear.

  “But there is more to it,” he added in a vague tone.

  “Then it is a fragment ...,” Bal said quietly to himself, his voice trailing off. He almost sounded as if he’d hoped this gem wasn’t a match for his own, that the gem hadn’t led them to this one.

  Beside them, the museum curator, a very tall, very lanky being with an enormous forehead, asked, “Will there be anything else?”

  He held his hands clas
ped together in front of him, long, slender fingers intertwined, giving no sign that he had heard either comment by Bal or Rebani. A Vislayan, he was bony and white, resembling an oversized skeleton of sorts.

  “I would like you to turn this gem over to me,” the Sabour said, without hesitation.

  The curator flinched, visibly swallowing, his Adam’s Apple shooting up the length of his long, thin neck, then back down again, as his skin flushed a deep gray.

  “You may check my credentials,” Rebani assured him, offering his I-card with the pertinent information on it.

  As the curator’s skin returned slowly to its light blue-white hue, his bone-like fingers unfolded, and he took the card from Rebani’s grasp. The card disappeared in the curator’s clutch.

  “I believe the gem is in danger,” explained the Sabour, “and would be safer in my custody than in the Museum.”

  “No offense,” Bal put in quickly as he tried to smile in a friendly manner.

  As the tall, thin curator turned to leave, the Sabour added, “I’m sure the Brotherhood of Sabours will compensate you for your trouble in whatever manner you deem appropriate.”

  The curator left the room.

  “What if he doesn’t want to give you the gem?” Bal asked quietly as he observed the crystal fragment.

  “The will of a Sabour may be delayed,” Rebani said simply, “but never thwarted.”

  “That’s floogwash and you know it,” growled Bal. The Sabour could be a likable being, thought the Corruban adventurer, if not for his aloof pomposity.

  Rebani studied Bal for a moment, then replied, “Very well. I will either find another way to persuade the curator, or guard the gem here.”