by Brandt Legg
“But they don’t recognize our laws controlling minerals, herbs, and other natural resources.”
“I know,” she scolded. “That doesn’t mean we can just allow—”
He stared at the Arc. “Uprising, revolution, war . . . perhaps it is you who has brought about the Terminus Doom.”
“That is possible,” she admitted. “Which is why I have asked you here.”
He looked at her, now even less sure of what she could possibly want from him.
“I need your help, for you to come to my side. It is the only chance to maintain control against Shank and Jenso.”
He nodded. “I see. And what of Trynn?”
“Trynn is safe, I have seen to that. And I will make sure he stays that way if you join me.”
Thinking that joining one of Trynn’s greatest foes might be the best way to help his old friend, Welhey agreed. “Then I will.”
Actions being less noble than one may have believed, Trynn had actually gone back to Solas for the rest of his Revon. “I’m sorry to admit that I cannot manage the fourth insertion without this,” he said, looking at his reflection in the mirror.
He was about to leave, heading for an Etheren village where he could pick up an unregistered long range goeze that could get him to Varvara Port. There were only hours remaining. In spite of the now linked Jesus Eysen, he knew the risks were still astronomical. He looked out the window toward the west, wondering if this would be his last sunset.
The view from the five-hundred-thirty-ninth floor was magnificent. It reminded him of Shanoah, and the pain that thought brought with it swept him into a tentative space he couldn’t handle just then.
“Even if this is the last sunset, it won’t actually be the last. There will be others in the dwindling days and months ahead, as the full erosion sets in and the Terminus Doom locks its claws around the light of humanity, crushing it, ending it for all time, as if it had never been,” he whispered to the ethers. “But it will be the last sunset of this time, the time when we still had a chance, that we might somehow save it all. The last sunset that would yet contain beauty, hope, and love.”
As he uttered the word ‘love,’ he checked again for any news of Shanoah.
There was none.
He would have to go quickly. Even if the shaman could help, there was so little time to get back. Grabbing his Eysen and stuffing it into a pack, along with some extra particle analyzers, a photon tube, and an infer-gun, Trynn glanced around one last time to be sure nothing else illegal remained.
He didn’t hear the door shift open, so when someone said his name, it didn’t seem real. Having been completely lost in his thoughts, her voice could only have been a dream.
Trynn turned around, unable to resist the ‘siren song,’ knowing that if she wasn’t there, he would crash into the rocks and be obliterated.
Glowing, as if from another realm, stood Shanoah.
Eighty
It cannot be, Trynn thought. Yet, once the light panel in the doorway subsided, he saw she was actually there. And, as the glow faded, he saw the damage. More than just the bruises and cuts, her eyes were strained, hollow, lost. His assessment incomplete, he moved to her, covering the twenty feet between them as if taking one step. He reached for her clenched fists; they fell open.
Sliding into each other’s arms, a silent conversation covering months and years, entire lifetimes, was spoken in that soulful embrace. A reminder of who they were, together and to each other.
Finally, he whispered, “How are you here?” wondering again if she really was, as if this had all been conjured . . . what he’d lost . . . an Eysen illusion, something with the photons and other molecules fooling him. He might be delirious. Or maybe the Revon is starting to take my mind. “I just checked. How can they not know you’re back?”
“They know,” she answered angrily. “The Arc just doesn’t want anybody else to know.”
Instantly, he realized why.
The mission had failed. Of course it had, or she would have been back long ago. If they’d made it through, she would not be looking this way. The Arc, The Circle, they were trying to stop panic and despair. What would the Cosegans do, the Etherens, the Havloses, if they found out that this would be the last sunset of any meaning?
He stepped back a few inches, putting his hand so close to her face that they could both feel the changing temperature, yet, worried about her injuries, he did not touch her. “What happened?” His words were steeped with meaning, knowing, in this case, that the simple phrase contained the complexities of hundreds of questions.
Her eyes filled with tears. “Only six of us returned.”
His face wrenched in the horror of her answer. Fifty-four of them had left. Fifty-four brilliant, brave Imazes. He didn’t even realize the ship could be flown with such a skeletal group. What must they have encountered to have lost so many, and still six had made it back?
Shanoah survived.
In that instant, all his scientific analysis shredded parts of his mind, now invaded with the human tragedy of her flight, the potential loss to them all . . .
The Terminus Doom.
Shanoah’s teary eyes reflected all of his thoughts, as sharing the tragic news seemed to magnify it. Her tears fell. She grabbed him and pressed herself against his body. “We almost didn’t come back.”
In her tone and knowing her thoughts, Trynn realized it wasn’t because they, too, had almost died—although that was true. They almost didn’t come back because they had considered pushing through, just the six of them, continuing on against every conceivable odd, to try and complete the mission.
“How?” he asked again.
“We were immersed in an incessant blinking.” She opened and closed her hands as if trying to mimic it. “So rapid, and incredibly painful to endure. The strobing went from absolute blackness to those damned colors. Every one of them seemed like an exploding sun.”
“You don’t have—”
“I wanted to escape . . . ” Her breathing was now more frantic, her eyes glossy with tears. “I also didn’t want to get out. It lures you in, like some sort of drug.” She looked panicked again. “It had overtaken all of us. Even with the others there, I felt so alone, and yet part of everything. My senses had been hijacked. I had no real control of my thoughts . . .” She took a deep breath, as if realizing something for the first time. “I was taken into the experience . . . something like a cross between a coma and a meditation.”
“You’re shaking,” Trynn said, briskly rubbing her back.
“Am I?”
“Just a little,” he said, but she was shaking uncontrollably. He worried she might go into shock. Trynn quickly draped a warm blanket across her back. “Maybe a drink,” he suggested, pouring her a Sodew, an herbal infused mineral water.
“I need to tell this,” she said, sipping the milky elixir. The light was soft as the sun, now behind the mountains, lit the sky in a diffused, peach-colored glow. “You were right the other day when you told me to face the time I lost Stave. This is like that. If I can’t face it now, how can I be expected to face it when I’m in the blind again?”
He wanted to tell her that there wouldn’t be a next time, that he would succeed through the Eysen, making another attempt unnecessary. And even if he failed, he would never let her go out there again. But he knew she would go, no matter what.
With the blanket wrapped around her like a shawl, she began pacing the room. “After the stones and pulsers,” she began again, this time speaking slowly and deliberately, “then came the deafening sounds. It went from absolute silence to excruciating noises. They were at once beautiful and torturous. That’s when we lost the first one, or what I believed then was the first. I didn’t know that Rawlee had died in the light. That Nay, Clenn, and Treena had been killed even before that. We didn’t know any of that yet, but. . .”
He waited as she looked out at the sky, seeing far more than he could.
“But the thing is,” she con
tinued, her voice suddenly changing to something sounding less like fear and more like reverence, “I saw it.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw another way through.”
Trynn checked his strandband.
The Terminus clock now showed one hundred days.
Epilogue
Rip, Gale, Cira, Savina, and Booker stood in the super-secure lab, on a remote and heavily fortified island somewhere in the Pacific. Specially designed stands cradled the four Eysens lined up in between them.
“You can feel the power,” Booker spoke quietly.
“Yes,” Rip said. “Imagine when we get the one from the wall powered up.” As three of them glowed, radiating different colors and seemingly random images, the fourth, the one pulled from the Roman wall remained dark.
“Hopefully today that will change,” Savina said. “I’ve done all the calculations and I believe our plan to use the other three to ‘jump start’ it will work.”
“It’s a complex operation, and I don’t want to rush it,” Booker said, still reeling from two disturbing discoveries they had made from viewing the Jesus Eysen.
They had been hoping, even expecting, something miraculous when they powered on the Jesus Eysen, a revelation at least, perhaps, the secrets to life, or an appearance by the great prophet himself. Instead, they saw a collapsing Cosegan world, torn by war and misery.”
“We need to rush,” Savina said. “We’re running out of time to save them.”
“You are ignoring what else we saw in our newest sphere,” Booker said. “Kalor Locke has found the fifth one before us and he’s using it to thwart our efforts. We’re in a race now. We must beat Locke to the last three Eysens.”
“It’s not just in the present,” Rip said. “There is real evidence beyond even Huang’s murder that there are those in the Cosegan world who want to stop us.”
“More the reason to proceed rapidly,” Savina said, blowing a wisp of hair off her face in an exasperated, stressful gesture.
“If we are not careful, we may lose what chance we have,” Booker said. “There is only one chance to get this right, eleven million years is a lot of time to navigate.”
“And time is a funny thing,” Savina countered.
“Exactly.”
“We must find Crying Man,” Gale whispered urgently.
“Crying Man may already be dead,” Savina said. “He may have died long before the Eysens ever reached us. Like the light of a dying star, he was gone prior to your first encounter with him.”
“Then we reach back farther,” Gale replied, refusing to accept a world without Crying Man. “Trynn is alive somewhere, in some time. He sent someone to save us, he sent each of these Eysens, and others we still must find. He did it for a reason, because there is a chance, not just to save the Cosegans, but to save us all.”
Shanoah wiped a tear. “We had another moment,” she said of the nearly two days they had spent in hiding. “I know I’m being greedy, but I don’t want it to be our last.”
“We must succeed then,” Trynn said, standing next to the goeze. “Our ventures into the far-future are the best hope to save this.”
She looked back over her shoulder at a noise. The guardians were hunting him. And he had to get to the Havlos lands, his only chance for freedom and to continue his work.
“Come with me,” She said. “I can smuggle you aboard.” With her newfound knowledge of a way through the Epic-seam, and the extra days gained on the Terminus clock, she was certain they would make it to the far-future this time and erase the Doom. “That way we are together no matter what.”
He looked at her half angry that she would discount his work, and half desperate to join her. “I wish that were possible.”
“I know,” she whispered. “Find me then.”
Trynn nodded. “I always will.” He kissed her one last time, then climbed into the goeze.
Shanoah watched until it disappeared on the horizon, wondering if she would ever see him again, knowing that their intertwined fates could save the future, the Cosegan world, and time itself, yet cost them their destined time together . . . Can love endure the end of humanity? She thought it must. However, the greater question was, Can love survive the saving of everything? She didn’t know, but hoped to discover that answer one day.
The Arc and Welhey stood high atop Solas on the upper floor of the Reach and strategized the best way to beat back a coup from Shank and Jenso.
She had already confided to Welhey that all along she’d hedged her bets by secretly allowing Trynn a loose leash while placating the two powerful rivals.
“I’ve received reports that Shank and Jenso believe the time has come to replace me with one of them,” the Arc said.
“Surely they know you will not be so easily toppled,” Welhey said.
“They are not fools. Still, they’ve begun building their alliance into an opposition party.”
“Opposition party? Sounds like a tactic the Havloses use.”
“Yes, it is something never seen in Cosegan memory.” She looked out past Solas, to the wild lands, wondering where Trynn was, would he be able to save them in time. “They will have an easier time with war brewing.”
“Will the Havloses be so reckless?”
“Reckless? They have been waiting for this moment for thousands of years. And of course it comes at the same time we are facing a full-scale Etheren uprising and potential revolts from numerous Cosegan factions.” They made no eye contact with each other as they talked, both gazing out over their beloved metropolis.
“There is talk in the cities that people don’t think your reign will last much longer.”
“I know of this talk,” She said defiantly. “They should know that if I fall, it all falls.”
Welhey nodded, still unsure if he believed her.
The Arc sensed his doubt and pounced. “Don’t imagine it is different, if you are unsure, ask your friend Trynn what he has seen. He will tell you that I speak the truth.”
“I will do that, when I see him next,” Welhey said, knowing that might not be for a very long time. “Until then, I will take you at your word.” He caught her eye, they took each other in completely, nodding in agreement and respect.
At Welhey’s request, the Arc had already granted the release of Cardd, Julae, Prayta, Kavid, and Anjee. However, they would all be watched. Their strandbands were locked and inserted with a monitoring program.
Markol was charged with murder by a secret tribunal who kept a sealed indictment against Shank at the Arc’s request. “I’ll use that at the appropriate time,” she had confided to Weals, who was busy keeping tabs on a handful of her current targets.
“Shank and Jenso are furious that you removed the committee’s oversight of the Enders,” Welhey said, sipping a glass of Sodew as the sun began to set, knowing he should leave soon.
“I know they are.” She smiled. “I’ve secretly moved them to High-peak, where I’m allowing Markol to serve his sentence.”
“Your crew of elite scientists might find a way to add to the time Shanoah and Trynn put on the Terminus clock?”
“Yes.”
“And what of all the confiscated globotite?”
She looked at him, suddenly suspicious this man was slipping from her, but she covered it quickly. “Yes, I hold quite a stockpile of the precious mineral, and I am prepared to use it to maintain my rule.” She checked his expression to see if he was shocked at her candor, and was delighted to notice a bit of surprise. She also would provide enough to Markol so he could attempt to wrestle control of the already inserted Eysens from Trynn, but she didn’t tell Welhey that part of her plan. “Perhaps, I might even trade some to Trynn, if it becomes necessary to halt war with the Havloses,” she added. “I am well aware that the Terminus Doom can arrive in any number of ways. “Globotite can be used to power an Eysen, and also to take power from a movement.”
Trynn caught up with Mairis, Ovan, and the others at the Varvara Port i
n the Havlos lands, where he was granted asylum. They quickly secured a location at the port in which to set up a lab, but kept much of the operations on the vessels. “We need to be prepared to move, always,” Trynn told them.
“I’ve taken care of the arms,” Ovan told him privately. “Installation begins tomorrow.”
“Good,” Trynn responded, clearly relieved. “War is coming and we need the vessels to be able to defend themselves.”
“Laser munitions, including pulsar blast canons, will be fitted to the vessels, and one hundred forty-four each of infer-guns and screamer guns for the crew,” Ovan said. “Arms dealing is a banishment offense.”
“We’ve banished ourselves,” Trynn said, waving his arm around to the port. “Or haven’t you noticed we’re in the Havlos lands now?”
“I noticed,” he said sadly. “But war? Cosegans have no memory of war . . . do you really believe it will come to that?”
“It appears unavoidable.”
“How will we survive it?”
“The Eysen,” Trynn said, as Mairis joined them. “The Eysen will show us the way forward.”
“I’ve heard of a globotite stash,” Mairis told them.
“Where?” Trynn asked, imagining a dangerous trip back to the Cosegan side.
“In Havlos lands. Not far from here,” she said. “The Havloses don’t use it, but there are smugglers, speculators, and dealers who have been acquiring it ever since the Arc banned it.”
“Then maybe we’re back in business,” he said, smiling at his daughter. “Well done.”
She smiled, happy to be spending more time with her father. He’d put her in charge of Globotite acquisitions. “Nothing is more important,” he’d told her.
Trynn checked the Terminus clock. Five days had passed since Shanoah’s return, the last time he’d looked it showed ninety-five days. “Very well done,” he added, showing them that it had moved back to ninety-nine days.
