The comment struck Genevieve as so outrageous that she swirled about. She did not expect to find Ephraim standing within arm’s reach.
“Oh, my dear pathetic Ephraim, I am sure you surrounded yourself with ample company during the lean times. You always had a fancy for the young and pliable, especially peacekeepers on leave, as I recall. How about that interesting detective who joined me for dessert?”
Ephraim laughed. “Ivanovic? Please, Gen. That man is despicable even by my standards. But I wouldn’t have found you without his help. Now, are you going to answer my questions?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Classified.”
“Utterly irrelevant.”
“Never going to happen.”
“Of course it will.”
“Why are so sure?”
“Because,” he grabbed her behind the neck and pulled her to within an inch of his lips. “I enjoy getting my way. Yes?”
Ephraim smothered her in a kiss before she could put up a fight. He wrapped his arms around her painfully tight. She struggled, but only for a few seconds. As Genevieve gave in, Ephraim loosened his grip, pulled back the chest flaps of her body-dress, and laid his lips upon her exaggerated breasts. She cursed as he indulged himself, her synthetic blood mask overwhelming the experienced instincts that warned her to keep her distance from this man. When at last Ephraim came up for air and kissed her one more time on the lips, he pulled her into another hug and whispered into her ear.
“Finnion’s is built on top of an undocumented research facility. It is neither on the register nor off because all the funding was officially directed to Finnion’s. Easy to do since this is a Presidium-managed resort with the only legal blood masking in the Collectorate. Yes? You are on Finnion’s payroll, Ms. Salamone. No doubt your colleagues as well.” He kissed her on the ear. “A starting point for conversation, wouldn’t you say?”
She rolled her eyes but did not let go of him. “And to think, I was prepared to underestimate you.”
“In truth, we almost overlooked this place. There are several commercial facilities operated as cover for Presidium black-lane projects, but this is the trickiest. Located near an otherwise uninhabitable planetary system and the one mapped Nexus inaccessible to the Carrier fleet. Only the crème come here, and they have too much invested in their personal entertainment to consider what goes on beneath the primary concourse. A perfect arrangement. Yes?”
Genevieve’s sexual drive kicked into a higher gear, but she tried to fight it. She kissed Ephraim and planted her tongue in his mouth while silently cursing him.
“The sweetness of lost youth,” he said when the kiss ended, then grimaced. “How long have you had the mask? The synthetic has been known to become unstable after a few months.”
She laughed. “You think? Isn’t this sufficient proof?”
Ephraim played along. “Indeed. I would have sooner expected the sun to swallow Earth than you come back into my arms. So, before we undress, I need an additional motivator.”
“Such as?”
“Tell me what I do not already know. Something you learned in the past thirteen years.”
The synthetic blood roiled within Genevieve, and she desperately wanted to throw off her body-dress. She needed to feel his flesh, to have him inside her.
“Universes,” she said, first at a whisper. “More than ours. We know of one other for certain. I … I’ve been there.” She tried to kiss Ephraim, but he tilted back, clearly awaiting more.
“Interesting,” he said. “How did you make such a dramatic discovery?”
“The mission. Found a … like a seam in a fabric. Wasn’t expecting it.” She could feel the perspiration beneath her body-dress. “That’s where we found them. In between.”
Ephraim froze, his eyes piercing. He restrained his tone. “Them? I see. Who are they?”
She pushed him off her, began tearing at her body-dress, and pointed him to the bed across the great room. “Ride me, you bastard. I’ll tell you the whole cudfrucking story. Move!”
She descended upon him like a bird of prey, but Ephraim did not mind. He was equally excited, but for very different reasons. He was closer to what he needed far sooner than he expected. As he bared himself and prepared to ride his wife exactly as she requested, Ephraim offered silent thanks to Andreas Ivanovic, who had scouted Genevieve for days and precisely anticipated her weakness.
One hour later, with Genevieve sound asleep, Ephraim was quite convinced he had not worked so hard since his first year in the UG. Nonetheless, he felt proud of the effort and his ability to satisfy a woman in the throes of a sexual hyperdrive. He sat up against a fortress of pillows and stared at the beautiful body next to him. Genevieve slept on her stomach, one hand laid across his belly. He struggled to reconcile this traditionally cold, precise woman with the animalistic energy from which he was recovering. He wondered: If she had shown even an inkling of this ability early in our marriage, would we have become more to each other than Ilya’s parents? After all he had done, everything he had built according to the Jewels’ mission, he found this moment next to Genevieve to be the most inconceivable.
He knew she would not soon awaken, so Ephraim dressed and stood before the spectacular view port in contemplation. He was sure what he had to do next, but he liked the idea of consulting with an old friend. He slipped on the blue glasses.
He found Frederic sitting alone in a city park staring at a checkers table. The ancestors within the link were scattered about, some indulging in picnics, others playing shuffleboard, and a few pedaling swan boats in the nearby lake. Frederic broke from his pose and offered a wide grin as Ephraim took a seat opposite him.
“Perfect timing,” Frederic said. “I had the strangest notion you would be joining me today. Never had the same sense of anticipation before.”
They shook hands. In that instant, Frederic absorbed Ephraim’s updated knowledge, including the tidbits drawn out of Genevieve.
Ephraim said dead-pan, “Intriguing. Yes?”
Frederic nodded. “Much more than this silly little game.” He pointed to the checkerboard. “And when she talked about the ‘in between,’ you believe she was referring to the Jewels?”
“Very possibly. The timing is appropriate.”
“If she is, and her mission harnessed their energy, any piece of them at all …”
“Then they are with us now. Likely in the bowels of this space station. Exactly what they said would happen – the overreach. Frederic, when she wakes, I will have no problem convincing her to tell me everything. We will almost certainly learn how far we are from the end of our mission. Yes?”
“It would appear the end may be within sight.”
“Perhaps. But I am concerned. It is why I have come to you. Ilya has made no contact with any of us in six years. This mission cannot end without him. Just as your father created the Chancellor caste and began this cycle, Ilya must finish it. All we have ever been told – even the words of the ‘Final Accord’ – ensure that destruction and renewal will come at the hands of the last generation. My instincts suggest the script is being changed somehow.”
“Or perhaps the script is playing out as written, but we misinterpreted the words. Ephraim, my dear friend, I advised you six years ago to let Ilya seek his own path. He’ll find his way back around to the role he was always destined to play.”
“So you said, and I let him go. I have been patient over these lonely years. Yes? I have waited for an explanation about your father, why he reappeared only to leave with Ilya, and the true nature of the Jewels. Frederic, you have given me no answers.”
“With good reason. Now you wish to arrange a deal?”
“Yes. I will pass along everything Genevieve reveals. In return, you will explain why Henrik Ericsson is different from all his descendants.”
Frederic shrugged. “Fair and reasonable, my friend. I will have to discuss it with the others, but I believe we can reach a pact, assuming yo
ur revelations change the status of our mission. We will be waiting.”
Ephraim retreated from the glasses. An hour later, Genevieve awoke calm and refreshed. Ephraim poured two cups of coffee from the auto-server. He ordered her a robe through the auto-server, and she found the blue silk to be a luscious fit against her fraudulent young body. They sat together by the view port and sipped coffee while studying the nebula.
“I had a dream,” she said. Her voice was not provocative, which surprised Ephraim. “A revelation of sorts. Naturally, you were there. Always seems to happen after sex: The man is in the dream. Usually an annoyance.”
“But not this time?”
“No. I couldn’t make sense of it all, but you spent a considerable amount of time smiling.” She rolled her eyes. “Do not get any ideas, Ephraim. Tonight was a one-time venture. At any rate, we were standing near each other. The light was coming at us from all directions. I felt … lighter … as if relieved of all my burdens. And then I understood.”
Ephraim took a sip. “Understood what exactly?”
“That I should be very glad you are here.” She saw his raised brow and obviously understood his suspicion. “Yes, I know. How could I be glad to see a man with whom I haven’t had a civil conversation in twenty years? Oh, I believe you’ll see why before this night is over.”
“So you are prepared to tell me everything?”
“Yes, but elsewhere. They say these suites are not surveilled in order to maintain client privacy, but I have no reason to believe them.”
“Which is why I instituted countermeasures upon my arrival,” Ephraim said with confidence. “This suite is protected with a language inverter.”
“Trust me, Ephraim. My colleagues can break the encryption with minimal fanfare. We may be safe, but I prefer safer.”
He groaned. “Very well. And your proposal is?”
Genevieve took him a route he did not see coming, although he quickly realized its brilliance. She advised him to bring along a hand-held CV. After she changed back into her body-dress, she stopped off at her suite to retrieve a data chip and took Ephraim to Level Twelve. They approached a holo-field flashing directions to the Free Space Adventures.
They joined a short queue of Finnion’s patrons who were choosing from among hundreds of available solo flight modules. These single-person EVA cylinders were often referred to as “coffins with a view” even though less than one in a million tourists or UG trainees actually died as a result of malfunction, usually caused by the rare but panicked claustrophobe. The simple design allowed the user to step within, grab hold of the thruster controls on either side, and wait for the polyglass seal to secure the user inside. Maintaining forward thrust and lateral turns was easier than driving a personal Scram. Just before they entered their modules – customized for internal communications – Genevieve slipped the data chip to Ephraim.
Thirty minutes later, they hovered more than two hundred meters outside the station. Other patrons scattered about, some attempting to perform tricky maneuvers as if this were a thrill ride, but most barely moved once they found a quiet spot. Even Ephraim, despite having experienced this in the Guard decades earlier and having seen three thousand years of history through the eyes of his ancestors, felt the power of the moment. The great nebula seemed close enough to touch, and the silence inside the module, where artificial gravity did not exist, could not be defined. He was almost moved to ecstasy. Almost.
The stream amp implanted against his right temple buzzed, and he heard Genevieve. They knew the signal between personal amps could not be intercepted. She fired retros on her module until she faced him, five meters ahead.
“Wait until you understand where I’ve been before you access the data chip,” she said.
Ephraim obeyed. He had come too far, waited too long to do otherwise.
“We were more than a year into the mission before we discovered the rift between universes,” she began. “At first, we didn’t know what to make of it. We were looking for an energy source among the dark strata. We sent drones through it. They vanished for hours, some even days. They returned with observational data identical to our own, as if they had never left our space. But we registered time distortions that were impossible, even when considering relativistic travel. The rift itself was very small, perhaps no bigger than this module. And unlike Nexus points on the Fulcrum, this rift had a fixed geometry. We had countless theories, and tried a variety of measures to expand the rift. Nothing succeeded.
“Ultimately, we have determined the rift to be a naturally-occurring phenomenon. And there are others. We devised a formula for detecting rifts. In the years since we returned, we have found more than twenty throughout the Collectorate. Ephraim, most of them are on planets. Two of them are on Earth. I’ve been through one. I’ve experienced another Earth. We’ve given them a name: Inter-Dimensional Folds.”
Ephraim was stunned. “You mean to say you traveled home during these years?”
“Yes. I debated coming to Philadelphia Redux for no other reason than to learn about Ilya’s death. In truth, I didn’t dare. Ephraim, the data chip contains my full mission reports. I don’t believe you fully appreciate what I’m risking by leaking this information. Less than forty people know about the IDFs, and I’m not sure if any purpose can be served for this to spread.”
“I see. And this other Earth …?”
“Not important. Not when you consider what the rest of our team has been doing. Ephraim, we made ghastly errors. We allowed the Presidium to become directly involved. If you needed all this time to find me, then I can only assume you’ve been kept far from the loop.”
Ephraim nodded. His Presidium contacts had been cooler toward him in recent years, a fact he attributed to fallout from his role in the UG’s non-intervention strategy on Hiebimini.
Genevieve continued. “Three months after we found the first IDF, we thought our mission was over. The energy source we sought couldn’t be found. Then, less than two days before we were going to start our return to the Nexus, they came.” She paused. Even from five meters, Ephraim could see the lump in her throat. He could feel his adrenalin rise.
“Who came, Gen?”
“They appeared at the IDF. We were never certain whether they came through the rift or were a part of it all along. Ephraim, it was the energy source. Even in the darkness of space, they shimmered. They were gold, not metallic but also not gaseous. They had a viscosity similar to plasma. Yes, viscosity. The drones gathered samples. When we studied the samples, we were as excited as we were terrified. Ephraim, at first we thought we had found The Origin. The very energy from which the universe began. The Origin used to be the grail among astrophysicists, before they stopped trying centuries ago.”
“And is it The Origin?”
“No. Far from it. Greater, perhaps. Worse, for certain.”
“You have dissolved into riddles. What did you find?”
“Distinct energy signatures within a collective. Each has a different purpose, and each by itself is of no great consequence. But together … Ephraim, we have gone too far this time.” She shook her head. “They told us the days of great exploration were behind us, that there were no more frontiers. So I had to prove them wrong. Like you, I’m an egomaniac with a need for absolute control.” Genevieve sighed. “We should have stayed home. … They are alive, Ephraim. They are an organic form of energy. We have no evidence they are sentient, but we do know what they are capable of, as do the Presidium oversight managers. The data chip contains four years’ research. That was all I was able to record before I was taken off as Jewels team leader and transferred to the IDF search team.”
Ephraim felt cold. “What term did you say? Jewels?”
“Yes. I named the energy source the Jewels of Eternity. Thought it was catchy.”
He swallowed. “That name. How did you reach it?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know. Pulled it out of the air? Heard it in a dream? Doesn’t matter, Ephraim. You need to li
sten to me very closely. We calculated the applications for Jewel energy, and the possibilities were truly amazing. Unfortunately, the Presidium managers took the team in a different direction once I was reassigned. Apparently, the widespread unrest since the Hiebim war began had some of them worried. Colonial Sanctums were reporting a rise in seditious literature and internecine disturbances. Even though only Hiebimini was at war, the other colonies were afraid the conflict might spread. The managers wanted greater insurance against open rebellion. Ephraim, put the data chip into your CV and glyph to Nodal One-Three.”
Ephraim followed her instructions. The resulting holograph showed a translucent cylindrical device three meters long, one meter in diameter, with four pulsating tubes running end to end. If he chose, he could access more than fifty sub-nodals detailing what he realized at once to be a weapon. The design did not strike him as extraordinary, but he was transfixed by what he saw inside. Were these the Jewels? Or at the very least, a piece of them?
“Ephraim,” she said, “this is a planet-killer. Less than six months ago, a prototype was detonated on the largest moon on Centauri VI. The target was chosen because the Centauri system is uninhabited and accessible by a classified Nexus. I was allowed on the mission as an observer. The explosive was loaded inside a penetrator missile, the kind used by exogeologists. A drone fired the missile from orbit. We were positioned three AUs from Centauri VI, supposedly a safe distance. Not only was the moon obliterated, but so was Centauri VI, a gas giant. The shock wave increased resonance the more it expanded. Then the grand finale.”
Suddenly, the biggest celestial event of the past thousand years came into focus. Even to the casual observer, the recent and unexpected deep-space event had been a dazzler. Explorers and tourists alike had been scrambling to finagle trips to the system despite an embargo enforced by UG patrol ships at the Nexus. The pieces fell into place for Ephraim.
“The Centauri supernova,” he whispered, truly overwhelmed by the implications.
The Father Unbound Page 34
