by Brandt Legg
“You wonder too much, Trynn,” she said, knowing his thoughts. “We cannot go back, only forward. You have enough to deal with to occupy your mind.”
“What if the Revon runs out?”
“There will be enough . . . if you work fast enough.”
“I don’t know if I can work fast enough.”
“You know that there are only so many moments to be able to see what you need. And it won’t matter if there is enough of the herb or not. In the end, you will either do it, or you will not.”
If that advice had come from anybody else, Trynn might have been annoyed, but the way she spoke her words, the glow about her, and her simple presence made every syllable sound like a solution. And Trynn needed solutions almost more than he needed time.
“Do you have it?” he asked, trying not to sound desperate.
“Of course I do.” She pulled a small pouch made from some unknown material that itself seemed to be threads of light, and handed it to him. He recognized the pouch, identical to the ones she’d given him each of the previous times. He knew it would contain a certain number of doses of Revon, and when he took the last one, the pouch would vanish, as if it had melted into the air. In the dark of his room at night, he’d noticed that the pouch had a very subtle glow to it. He kept it hidden because, like globotite, Revon was banned. However, it wasn’t as dangerous, because the few who knew of it did not believe it still existed.
Trynn did not like to be so dependent on one person for something so important, and yet, standing before Dreemelle, it was impossible not to trust her completely. “Thank you.”
“You must be careful, Trynn.”
He assumed she was warning him once again about the risks of using the herb. She had told him, the first time she gave him Revon, that its side effects included temporary diminishing telepathy, but in some cases the loss could be permanent. “I am limiting your intake, but there is the chance of miscalculation. I have known some who have suffered irreparable brain damage from using Revon too often.”
“I’m careful.”
She nodded as if this was not enough, but she would accept it anyway. “Today I am warning you to be careful for another reason. You have to know that everything you think is not always correct.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think everybody would like to save humanity. This is not so. And when you think that they would, you are thinking incorrectly. This clouds your judgment of other things. Do you understand? It’s very important that you understand.”
“I think so.” It seemed an insane thought to him that someone might not want to save humanity. He understood the Imazes and the other programs The Circle was working on to save everyone, but those were just differences.
Could there really be a person who did not want any of them to succeed?
“You must do more than think,” she said as he took the pouch.
Something in her words made him smile, which in turn made her smile. Dreemelle did not accept payment for the herb. She’d told him that her compensation came in other forms, either favors or knowing what he was contributing to the universal bank of good and bad, pluses and minuses.
As his goeze took him to the outerlands, his mind raced with all of the challenges before him, but he resisted taking the herb just yet. Revon multiplied a person’s mental capacity by a factor of ten. It was the only way Trynn could juggle the complexities and ramifications of cause and effect when dealing with far future manipulations.
I’ll save it for the lab, he thought as the vehicle raced along at supersonic speeds. If it eventually eats my brain, so be it. Just keep my mind in one piece long enough to save the world.
Thirty-Three
Jofyser turned slowly around, looking for a way out, wondering if he jumped from the moving skybridge, would another form below that might save his life and provide an escape? But as he turned, he saw the flyer was after another Etheren—someone their strands had identified from the Official register. He said a quick prayer for the Etheren, added a thanks that he wasn’t registered, then slipped into the building with the ones in the crowd who hadn’t stopped to see the arrest.
The building opened to multi-levels of shops and galleries. Cosegans, Etherens, and Havloses all spent considerable time and energy pursuing the arts, and galleries were common. He walked past an Imaze gallery; the space travelers had some of the most incredible media—light-sculptures, still and moving, showing imagery from worlds far beyond Earth’s view.
These massive galleries would make an excellent place to hide, at least temporarily, Jofyser thought, but then spotted a guardian and quickly ducked out the other side of a winding corridor that connected the galleries. He soon found himself inside a health-lounge. The Cosegan’s loved natural juices made from any number of things, including water from the different moons of Jupiter, infused with minerals from Mars and other nearby planets. Many exotic ingredients came from Earth, the trade representing a large part of Etheren incomes.
Etherens were experts at finding the right bark shavings from specific trees, rare bird feathers, glacier ice, filtered breezes from certain mountain tops, obscure floral essences, and thousands of other natural ingredients for elixirs. While Cosegans drank mostly for health benefits, mental fitness, and longevity, many consumed the elixirs just for pleasure and relaxation. Alcohol and synthetic drugs did not exist.
The elixirs . . . maybe that’s my answer. Suddenly realizing he might have found a way to save the globotite. Jofyser went through to the long circular bar, configured as a doughnut with the seats in the middle, dark light separating sections. He searched, knowing there would be a large area most likely manned by Etherens who had relocated to the city in order to increase their livelihoods.
He saw a young Etheren girl, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, behind the counter. It was not unusual to see someone so young working. Because Cosegans had no formal schools, no classrooms or classes, they all learned from their first steps until there final dying breaths by immersion in life. Growing up with crystal-minds allowed them access to incredible amounts of information and knowledge. Eventually they could utilize Eysens and learn anything that interested them. Instilled in Cosegans at a very young age by their society was the concept that learning was constant. They were taught as children how to heal themselves and explore their own minds. Since they started almost at birth, learning came incredibly easy after that.
Jofyser smiled at the girl, recognizing her. He had not known her well, but had been familiar with her family even before she was born. And he could see, as her face brightened, she recognized him.
“Hello,” she said, giving the customary Etheren greeting where one hand quickly reached for the sky, the other to her head and then extending them both to him.
He returned the motion. “How is the city treating you?”
“I miss home,” she said, “but it is good here.”
“Lots of fascinating people.” He gazed about the crowded lounge.
“Are you okay?” she asked, able to detect his distress.
He looked at her. She had the skill.
Telepathically, she ascertained the situation. Her facial expression changed to concern as she began to unfold his thoughts. Her eyes closed for a moment. “You won’t be safe here,” she said, looking around cautiously.
“I know.”
“The guardians will check anywhere Etherens are,” she said. “I am registered.”
He nodded.
She handed him a drink called ‘crandellous’ that would help his endurance and clarity of mind. She added an extra little sprinkle at the end.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Ground stron root.”
“To help with bravery,” he said, allowing himself a slight smile. “Thank you, I need it.” He downed the drink. “I must go.”
She nodded and touched his hand. Their eyes lingered for an instant.
He stepped away, then turned back. “I must ask you a favor.
”
She continued reading his thoughts so the words would not have to be spoken. Her eyes widened. “It is the greatest crime you are asking me to commit,” she told him with her thoughts.
“The Terminus Doom,” he said. “This is the final shipment.”
“I cannot.”
“You know what Trynn is trying to do, what he is risking for all of us.”
The girl knew Trynn’s daughter, Mairis. She had been a mentor to her when she was only six or seven years old. She nodded slowly, her eyes remaining fixed on Jofyser. She said nothing for a moment, seeing what he had done, his globe running episodes, the chances he had taken. And why.
Many Cosegans refused to believe the Terminus Doom would ever come to be, suspecting there were other motives by scientists, or that it was a plot by the Havloses. But the Etherens knew better, as they dwelled in the realm of consciousness and the mind. Etherens, like what Trynn did through his Eysen, and the Imazes through their ships, could travel to the future in their minds. And although young, she had made several trips already. Not as far, but she knew many of her family and Etheren neighbors who had completed the journeys to that time.
She knew the Terminus Doom was real. “So it does not matter then,” he said after reading her thoughts.
“No,” she said sadly, understanding that even if she took the risk and did not survive it, it would be the same for her. “I have to do this for you, because none of us will survive the looming Doom.”
She, like other Etherens, could feel the vibration of the Doom already cutting into their straining lives, into the very existence of life itself. “Give it to me,” she said with her mind.
Jofyser slipped the pouch from his pocket and slid it across the bar, casually concealed in his palm. She touched his hand again, her long, delicate fingers expertly extracting it so that even if someone had been sitting close, they would never have noticed the exchange as more than a touch between friends.
In his thoughts, he told her the remaining details of the delivery. “Please tell my family I was honorable.”
“I hope to see you again,” she said as he left, knowing the odds were low that either of them would survive the day.
Thirty-Four
Whenever Trynn went to the Etheren settlements, he thought of his life before he’d met Shanoah, the good and the bad of it, but now he could not imagine being without her. He recalled their first meeting, when they’d been introduced as competitors.
First attempting to deal with the crisis of saving the future, four years earlier, The Circle had convened the greatest scientific minds in the Cosegan society. There were twenty-nine presentations at the Terminus-Response Conference. Four or five presenters spoke each day.
At the conclusion and after deliberations, The Circle would determine which course of action to pursue. Whatever undertaking they chose would require enormous resources, and a large number of their best minds would be diverted to the winning project.
On the final day, once The Circle had narrowed it down to three for a final debate. The finalists questioned each other’s plans, concepts, and ideas. Trynn and Shanoah met for the first time that day when they both wound up among the final three. The third, an Etheren woman, had created a complex system of manipulating time and future consequences through psychic energy vortexes. However, most saw her inclusion as more political than practical. The Etherens were more than a quarter of the Cosegan population.
It had come down to the Eysens, the Imazes, and the Etherens.
Trynn recalled the tension of that day. With everyone knowing the stakes, the Terminus Doom looming, each proposal had to be convincing. Trynn had been partially raised by the Etherens, and he didn’t agree that their participation was merely token. “They’re as likely as any of us to succeed,” he’d told a colleague. “Maybe more so.”
Still, with all that had happened since that monumental day, his most vivid recollection was of the first time he’d laid eyes on Shanoah. He couldn’t help but be struck and distracted by her beauty. Her large eyes seem to convey everything he had ever learned, her determination took his breath, and her knowledge excited him more than anything. Yet she was not a friendly comrade. Shanoah was fighting for her idea. What astonished him most was her knowledge of Eysens. He had long been considered the modern master of the powerful orbs, and yet Shanoah seemed to have an understanding and recall about the glowing spheres that challenged him for the first time since he’d been a student, so many years earlier.
“Your concept of placing an Eysen eleven million years into the future can never be precise enough,” she began as her first challenge. “The enormity of sway across such a period of time, the compounding pressures of all that has come before, mixed with the potential of what could be, seems to pretend an impossible dichotomy to overcome.”
“It would seem that way to anyone without sufficient experience balancing in two of those time periods,” Trynn countered. “However, by utilizing the Eysens comprehensive views, it is possible to insert an Eysen at a place where it can be discovered precisely when, and specifically by whom, we want.”
“But how will that person know what to do?” the Etheren asked.
“And more than that,” Shanoah pushed her rival, “how can you expect someone from the primitive future to be able to grasp anything they could see in the Eysen at all?”
“I will be there to guide them,” Trynn answered.
“Be there?” Shanoah said incredulously. “I don’t believe you have passage on an Imaze ship.”
“No, I do not.”
“Then how do you propose to ‘be there’, as you say?”
“Surely you must be aware the Eysen can be used as a communications portal. I will project myself and instruct the recipient on what needs to be done.”
“And what will the instructions be?” the Arc asked, interrupting the debate.
“It is an extremely complex series of commands and movements that must be made in order to reverse the crisis. Our crystal-minds are currently working on developing the exact process,” Trynn said referring to the infinitely powerful Cosegan computers. “I can, of course, provide more details later.”
After some additional questioning from the Arc, Trynn's time was up, and the focus turned to Shanoah’s Imaze plan.
Trynn questioned her vigorously, which she seemed to enjoy. Even after the presentations were complete, while waiting outside for The Circle to decide, Trynn and Shanoah continued their passionate and ideological conversations.
“I don’t understand your hostility toward my work,” Trynn said as they walked out of the huge building, its rippling light walls extending higher than the nearby giant StarToucher trees. “I did not attack your plans like that.”
“I recall some pointed questions,” she said.
“Merely seeking clarification.”
She laughed. “The reason our approaches differ is because there is nothing to challenge in the Imaze’s plan. It is flawless, and it will work.”
It was Trynn's turn to laugh. “Now I finally get you. Any scientist will tell you, nothing is flawless.”
“That’s not true. I can name a thousand things which are flawless.”
“I’m listening.”
“Have you ever seen a star, the full moon, a teakki tree, a kis flower, the spiral of a solar system? How about a simple sunrise?”
In that moment, he fell in love with her.
Thirty-Five
Rip scanned the long stone wall, looking for anything out of place. It was early summer in Rome, and the tourists were thick enough to allow them to blend in easily—just another American family on holiday.
“There’s a chance that it will look different from the others,” Rip said hopefully.
Gale glanced down the wall. “Everything looks the same. A better chance is that it’s going to look just like the others.”
“Well, they will have mined these stones from other buildings. I’m expecting that since they came from the
same source, they will appear uniform, but what we’re looking for is a seam, or any subtle break in the pattern, a slight differential of color . . . ” He looked again, rubbing his hands over a section. “Course, with the age . . . the patina . . . ”
“What’s patina?” Cira asked.
“Patina?” Rip echoed absently, focused. “It’s when carbonic acid from the atmosphere causes desilisification on stone. This occurs simultaneously with microbes filling microfractures . . . The microbes actually eat the stone, and through a process of metabolizing the stone and additional nutrients, they produce metabolite. It’s then silicified. And when the microbes die, we have metabolitic by-products, minerals, silica acid precipitate, which fossilizes—”
“Sorry I asked,” Cira said, rolling her eyes.
“Well, it’s important to—”
“Patina is the shiny crust,” Gale said, pointing. “Basically dead microbes and microbe waste.”
“Thanks, Mom, for speaking English.”
“I taught her that,” Rip said.
All three of them laughed. Rip casually checked the crowds and saw several of their plain-clothed security people, a constant presence in their lives since they’d escaped with the first Eysen.
“Anyway, the patina may have covered any of the clues that were here,” Rip continued. “It will be difficult.”
“Especially since we don’t know when it was hidden,” Gale added.
“The writings indicate sometime in the late 1500s.”
“And where was it before then?” Gale, ever the reporter, mused.
“Although it would be nice to know, I don’t really care where it was before, as long as it’s here now.”
“How are we going to get it even if we locate the stone?” Cira asked. “You can’t just carry something like that out unnoticed.”
“Booker has a team of trained operatives who will come in and excavate it for us.”
