“John,” said Zhaan, “as individuals we can do nothing to resist the Queen. But together we may be able to resist her.”
“But we are together.”
“No. Boundaries are different here. We must meld together into one mind—a mind twice as powerful as that of the Queen.”
“I don’t know, Zhaan. I kind of like to keep my mind my own, and there’ve been so many people wandering through it lately, I feel like Grand Central Station at rush hour. If we combined into a single mind-unit, wouldn’t that just give the Queen an easier target?”
“I don’t think so, John. And—what have we got to lose?”
He had to admit she had a point. When he looked into the outside world he could see his body following Aeryn down the trail, close enough to push her off at any moment. Maybe she didn’t want to get into a skirmish on the slippery trail, where the body of the Promised One might sustain some damage and delay her plans. But when they reached the bottom—what then?
“OK,” he said. “It’s worth a shot.”
“Then what I need you to do, John, is very simple. I want you to now visualize yourself as a blank slate.”
“And once my mind is a blank slate?”
“Go through it. And I’ll be there.”
“You mean I get to look into your mind this time?”
“If you like. Of course, if you would care to avert your psychic eyes from certain secrets, I would appreciate it.”
“Just like you’ve done for me, hmmm? I know you’ve been checking out the old girlfriends. And the barf story. Boy, that will get a laugh around the food cube table on Moya!”
“That was remarkable. But very well. Let us make a pact. I will not share the things I have seen from being inside your mind. And if you see anything disconcerting in your mental journeys, then you will hold your tongue. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Come to me.”
Crichton stepped forward, moving his incorporeal form towards Zhaan.
CHAPTER 20
D’Argo, Aeryn and Crichton continued to move down the dark trail, and after a while they caught a glimmer of light from the very bottom of the pit.
D’Argo, in the lead, noticed it first. After his time in the dark night of the Queen of All Souls, his heart leaped at the idea that they might be coming out into light again.
“Look,” he said. “At the bottom, there. Just a glimmer.” He switched off his torch and they stared downwards.
“I don’t see a thing,” said Aeryn.
“Yes,” said Crichton. “I see it!” His voice was excited.
D’Argo switched on the torch again. “This must mean that we’re near the floor of the pit—and the Orb of All.”
They descended several more loops of the spiral, and the light became clearer—luminescent specks of jade, amethyst, and crystal that shone like jewels lit from within, gleaming under the water of a dark pond.
Aeryn said, “Yes, I see them now. Those aren’t lights, but reflections of lights. The thing that is casting those reflections is to the side, out of our view.”
“Like memory,” said D’Argo softly. In truth, the lights opened up memories he had suppressed since leaving his homeworld. His mind travelled back to the Lightsongs of D’Arpath in the C’Narran temples. Each cycle, every Luxan who could made the pilgrimage to see these fabulous gems, to bathe in their radiance and to perform the rites of the True Hearts in Quest.
He remembered the exhilaration of first seeing the lights in the temple, an awesome falling into color and glory, the reflections of a universe so peaceful and radiant that it took his breath away. With these lights in the pit below him turning his memory back, he drew strength from the peaceful lights of home.
Eventually they came to a place where the trail broadened into a kind of road. Soon D’Argo was able to see the floor of the pit, a great pool of oily liquid. The lights were reflected in this lake of darkness.
Only when they had almost reached the bottom of the trail did the canopy of stone give way enough for them to see where the lights were coming from. A great stone archway revealed a vast cave of stalactites and stalagmites, carved into geometrical designs and adorned with rings, apertures, and antennae. Beyond it they could see rows of small crystalline domes set into the rock, each of them glowing like a miniature star. The archway was guarded by an energy-barrier like a shimmering curtain of light, emanating from a shining orb set in the ceiling—the Orb of All.
“What is all this?” said Aeryn, stepping forward to study the array.
“Mineral computers of some sort? The technology is alien to me,” said D’Argo.
“You’re saying those are machines?” said Aeryn.
“I’m saying it’s tech.”
“You do mean machines.”
“In the sense, perhaps, that Moya is a machine,” replied D’Argo. “In many ways we biological creatures are living machines. Machines come in many forms.”
“This apparatus is a huge machine,” said Crichton, “used by the Nokmadi to give them something like immortality—it was what rendered them into their ‘ghost’ forms, and what keeps them that way. But now the Dayfolk want to take back their bodies. And the means of doing that is also in there.”
They studied the curtain of light guarding the archway.
“Yanor mentioned this barrier,” D’Argo told Crichton. “What it does exactly and how we may pass it, we do not yet know.”
“I know,” said Crichton.
Aeryn looked at him again, eyes narrowed. “How do you know?” she asked.
He gave another of those goofy smiles. “I found out from the Queen. The barrier reads brain patterns: it was designed to let only Nokmadi through. They have a particular brain pattern because of their particular character. The Nokmadi have always been great explorers, but their hunger for the universe was always tempered by a love for their home.”
“No longer,” D’Argo put in. “The Nokmadi on this ship have become polarized: some want only to stay in space, and others only to go home.”
“Exactly,” said Crichton. “But the machine has not changed. It will only let someone through who has the old pattern: the love of space, perfectly balanced by a desire for home.”
“If that’s all it requires, then we can all pass through,” said Aeryn. She moved towards the barrier. The light-curtain shimmered, and when she was still several paces away a bolt of energy crackled through the arch.
She retreated a few paces.
“I think,” said D’Argo, “that although you have some yearning for a home, Aeryn, you mostly grew up on a spaceship, and you have no home to go to now, and so your mind inclines more towards space. And although I love travelling the galaxy, I miss my home so deeply that my mind is not fully balanced between the two either.”
Aeryn nodded. “That’s true. And Crichton?”
Crichton shrugged.
“Crichton may have that balance,” said D’Argo. “He came out into space, but he yearns for his homeworld.”
Aeryn thought for a moment. “And in that room, the ‘reality’ room—he was thinking about an old legend on Earth, about that mysterious abandoned ship, and it made him homesick. Yet when he was back on Earth, that same legend made him want to explore. When he’s here, he wants to be there; when he’s there, he wants to be here.”
“Story of my life,” said Crichton. He walked towards the veil of energy, his right hand outstretched. Again the curtain crackled, bright daggers of light snapping across the entryway like a dazzling storm.
“Crichton!” cried Aeryn.
“But I am supposed to be the Promised One,” cried Crichton, and he stepped into the lightning.
* * *
Crichton was now fully merged into Zhaan’s mind, and the two of them were listening to the conversation between D’Argo, Aeryn, and the Queen of All Souls commanding Crichton’s body.
It was strange in Zhaan’s mind, but also peaceful, like floating on a lily pond. He wanted to ta
ke in the tranquillity before renewing the assault on the Queen, but the thought of someone else controlling his actions—and possibly hurting or killing Aeryn and D’Argo—renewed his focus.
“If we concentrate,” said Zhaan.
But then the Queen took Crichton’s body through the curtain of energy, and they were shaken as though an earthquake had dislodged the ground from its moorings. Crichton felt as if he had been hit in the face by a fighter jet. Then he was spinning backwards, spinning until he was nothing but a spiral of ghastly intensity, hurtled into a dimension where there was no footing.
* * *
Conjured out of mind and memory, he was elsewhere.
Crichton was in the room again, the room with the table, the room with the view of the launchpad, the room with the view of the Old Man.
“Dad!”
“John,” said his father. “Johnny Boy!”
His dad was dressed in his old beat-up dark green flannel robe, the one that Mom had given him for John’s sixth Christmas. He wore his ratty old moccasin-slippers and his dark hair was mussed, the way it was in the morning before he had a cup of coffee and a shave. Here was a version of Jack Crichton he remembered as a child. He was so unaccountably glad to see him, he almost ran over to hug him. He smelled of pipe tobacco and Old Spice and work. He was big and he was strong and he was Home.
“Dad!”
“Where the hell have you been, Johnny?”
“You remember. I went out aboard the Farscape I. I’ve been in space, far, far out in space.”
His father was listening this time. “In space? Well, you can tell me all about it in the car—but we’re not going until you clean up your room.”
“What?” Crichton was aghast. “Clean up my room?” And then he knew this was no hallucination: his dream-meanderings had segued into memory, and he was eleven years old, and his father was a giant presence, intimidating, infuriating, comforting.
Crichton felt a sudden surge of mingled emotions. Above all he felt relieved to see his father—and as he looked around he saw that now they were in the old split-level house back in Houston, where they’d lived when he was a boy. There was the blue recliner, the cream-colored walls with framed photos of the family, the picture window looking out on the pecan tree, its leaves full. There was the dog-bed for his dog Corky, and Corky’s leash hanging by the door. His feelings swelled. Damn if he wasn’t really home! When he yearned for Earth and all of Earth’s comforting familiarity, wasn’t it really his home and his family that he yearned for?
His father continued, and Crichton also recalled why he had wanted to escape from home, explore the unknown where there was excitement and danger—where you made your own world and your own responsibilities.
His father was still talking. “How can you expect to be an astronaut, Johnny, when your room is knee-deep in books and electronics and comics and models of the Mary Celeste? I’ve never seen such a mess in all my born days. And then when I ask you to clean it up, you make more noise than a fox in a two-story chicken house. Scientists have to be organized, Johnny. You’d better clean that up, or we’re not going to the movies this afternoon.”
The eleven-year-old John squirmed. “I’m too old to go to the movies with my father anyway,” he replied. “I’m going out to play spaceships with some guys from school.”
Jack Crichton’s face fell, and he spun on his heel and turned towards the window. He was silent a moment, and then he turned back toward John and nodded. “OK. I think you better clean your room up anyway, because I’m not kidding when I say that scientists have to know where to find their stuff.” He sank into the recliner and sighed. “Do me a favor, eh, John? At least push the piles around a little.” He looked away. “Guess you’re getting too big to go to the movies with your old dad.”
We didn’t go to the movies, thought Crichton, but I did follow him to the stars. And poised between memories of his father and memories of breaking away, a longing for the stars and a longing for home, Crichton knew he yearned for both—and the Orb of All let him pass.
* * *
Then there was an enormous rumble and a crack of energy, and Crichton was through the barrier, and standing next to the great mineral computer.
* * *
Pebbles, long embedded in the earthen walls, pelted down as the rumbling continued. One of the small stones flew into Aeryn’s face, stinging and drawing blood. More detritus rained down on her back. From the corner of her eye she could see that D’Argo was still standing before the archway, staring after Crichton.
“Get down!” she cried.
D’Argo tensed, but in another second the room had quit shaking.
Aeryn took a few deep breaths and then got up. “What do you think happened?”
“The barrier read Crichton’s neurological patterns and let him through—but something was not quite right.”
“I’ve been thinking that for some time,” said Aeryn. She called into the chamber: “Crichton!”
Crichton stood with his back to them. He was studying the array of minerals, wires and lights that made up the Nokmadi machine. They heard him laugh.
“Crichton, can you find a way to turn the energy-barrier off?” Aeryn called. He seemed not to hear. “Crichton!” she yelled. “What’s wrong? Can you turn off the barrier and let us through?”
At last Crichton moved towards the machine. He ran his fingers along the alleys and crevasses of the crystalloid mass, exploring the surface. His fingers found something, and he laughed again.
“D’Argo?” said Aeryn.
D’Argo looked at her and nodded. “I’m having the same doubts you’re having,” he said.
Crichton pressed indentations in the rock, and a series of red lights suddenly came to life. He worked his fingers over another set of indentations, and one of the red lights began to flash like an angry pulse. A humming and tremor arose, followed by a high-frequency beeping.
Then from the rock he pulled a giant switch and in a single motion he flipped it down.
The scarlet pulsing slowed and the machine fell silent. In the rows of domes set into the rock, the glowing dimmed slightly, and then, as they watched, it darkened even more, like the light dwindling as a winter day draws toward evening.
“Crichton!” yelled Aeryn. Crichton turned to face them. The smile on his face this time was calculating and pleased.
“You’re not Crichton,” said Aeryn, suddenly knowing with an absolute certainty that this creature before her was something entirely other. And who else had kidnapped Crichton and wanted to pass beyond the energy-barrier? “You’re the Queen of the Nokmadi!” She drew her pulse pistol and took aim.
“No, no, no,” said the Crichton-figure reprovingly, wagging a finger at her. Even his voice sounded different now: imperious, self-satisfied. “I may not be Crichton,” said that voice, “but this is certainly his body, and it can certainly die.”
Aeryn lowered her pistol uncertainly.
“What have you done to the machine?” demanded D’Argo.
“I have disabled it,” said the Crichton-figure. “In those domed recesses are the fleshly cores that underlie the form of everyone on this World—everyone except me. I have given up my core, and so I shall live forever. Now those fools and cowards, the Dayfolk, are crying to go home. To do that they would need to regain their bodies, because as ghosts they are tied to the power-gems for ever. But flesh must die! I have destroyed their fleshly cores—now they have no bodies, and so they will stay here, with me, and travel through space for eternity.”
“You have destroyed them?” cried Aeryn.
The Crichton-figure waved a hand towards the rows of domes, their light dwindling. “See? They are dying. And I—” He seemed to lose his train of thought, and then fixed his eyes on them again. “I shall make sure they cannot be revived.” He drew a pistol from his holster, took aim, and sent a bolt of energy slamming into the machine. The rockface exploded in a hail of sparks. With the stony surface blown away, they could
see a complicated interior of panels and intersections, now blackened and twisted.
The domes emitted the faintest of glows, dying down even as the three of them watched.
D’Argo had turned pale with anger. Aeryn stared at the destruction before them.
“And now there is one last thing to destroy,” said the figure, raising a pistol. Crichton’s hand pointed it at Crichton’s own temple. “Now I shall destroy Crichton.”
CHAPTER 21
The experience of drifting and commingling with the essence of Zhaan had been disjointed, alternately pleasurable and uncomfortable. It smelled and tasted of thoughts, concepts and suggestions that at times were alien. For all that Crichton tried to peer into Zhaan’s mysteries, he found that they remained mysteries because there were no microbes here to translate for him. And even if there had been, would these things even be translatable?
Ceremonies, smoky rooms filled with fragrant incense—plants, plants everywhere, vegetable-mind. Worship sunlight, sucking in nitrogen, glory to the water, glory to the blue and the green, chlorophyll heaven, cascading glory and darkness-in-the-roots fibres seeking and attaching …
Then the Queen moved his body through the energy-barrier, he was flung away from Zhaan’s mind and into his own past. Again he felt an overpowering sadness welling up in him.
“Zhaan?” he called. But she was gone. He was no longer melded with her mind, and even in the mist-world he could not find her. He thought for a moment. It must have been as they theorized on the march down the Hole in the World—something had disrupted the order, and Zhaan had been thrown back into her real body on Moya. Now he was alone, trapped mute inside his own body.
A dangling snake-like shimmer formed before him in the mist. “Now it’s just you and me,” said the Queen of All Souls. “And soon it will just be me.”
“What have you done with Zhaan?” Crichton demanded.
“She is leagues away, back on your pathetic little ship,” said the Queen, and there was satisfaction in her velvet voice. “She was useful for a time, keeping you occupied with each other. I hope you won’t be bored without her. But you haven’t long to be bored, anyway.”
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