by Peter David
Gwynn was the tallest of the three, and certainly carried herself with the most imperiousness. She seemed the type who not only did not suffer fools gladly, but also gladly made fools suffer. Vir found himself hoping that he didn’t fall into her personal definition of a fool. Kane’s jaw was pointed, as if perpetually outthrust in challenge, his skin dark and his eyes deep set and unreadable. Finian, by contrast, was the shortest of the three, with a round face and remarkably pale blue eyes that seemed sad … or amused … or perhaps amused by the sadness of it all.
“So, Vir,” Kane said briskly, rubbing his hands together as if he were anticipating the start of a truly engaging game of chess. “Are you ready to help save the galaxy?” Gwynn rolled her eyes and shook her head. Kane pretended not to notice.
“You mentioned that before,” said Vir, “without going into any detail. I don’t suppose you’d, ah … care to tell me now, would you. Just how, specifically, we’re going to be doing the rescuing of the galaxy.”
“We are heading to the Centauri dig on K0643,” Kane told him. “And there-“
“There what?” Gwynn interrupted him. “I think it best we get that settled here and now, Kane. When we discover the true nature of the dig-or, I should say, when we confirm our suspicions-what is it your intention that we do? You say `save the galaxy’ in a way that could only be considered blithely overconfident. You are aware that you’re exceeding the parameters of our assignment, are you not?”
“As are you,” Finian pointed out.
“Be quiet, Finian. I’m simply here to make sure that he,” and she stabbed a finger at Kane, “doesn’t get into any trouble.”
“Oh, of course not”
Gwynn looked up, startled. It was Vir who had spoken, and he was making no effort to stop the sarcasm dripping from his voice. “No, Kane never gets into trouble. Just me. I’m at the forefront of every one of his efforts.” He rose from his seat and, as he spoke, shook his head, as if he were having trouble believing what he had been through. “There was an assassination attempt on Sheridan, and Kane could have stopped it with no trouble. Instead he let me almost get killed before he stepped in. Then Kane wanted to convince me that there is a 'great darkness' on Centauri Prime and set me up so that I got myself thrown in prison.”
“And yet, here you are,” Kane pointed out.
“No thanks to you.”
“Actually, I seem to recall-“
“All right, all right, yes, on at least one occasion, it was thanks to you,” Vir allowed. “And maybe there were more occasions that I didn’t know about. The point is this: I don’t mind throwing myself into danger at this point.”
“You don’t?” Finian raised one nonexistent eyebrow. “I wouldn’t have fancied you the heroic type, myself.”
“No, I’m just tired, and I’m fed up,” said Vir. “Sometimes I think a hero is just a coward who’s too tired to care anymore.”
“There’s something to be said for that,” admitted Gwynn.
“As I was saying, if I’m going to throw myself into danger , this time you’re going to be right beside me, Kane. You, too, you two. I know that Kane is only a cloister techno-mage. That he’s been kind of… of stashed away all this time, off in your hiding place. That he hasn’t really spent much time in the outside world, so he’s not as proficient … no offense…”
“None taken,” Kane said calmly.
“… he’s not as proficient,” continued Vir.
Kane cleared his throat loudly. “You didn’t have to repeat it,” he informed him.
“Oh. Sorry. Anyway, he’s not well … well … you know, it’s what I said. That way … in the whole techno-magic and -mage thing. But with you two along, we-“
“Actually, I am only a cloister as well,” said Gwynn.
“You-?” He couldn’t quite believe it.
He turned and looked at Finian, who nodded sheepishly. “Guilty as charged.”
“Oh, perfect,” said Vir. “We’re going into a dangerous situation, and none of you is an upper-echelon techno-mage. ” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Perfect. All right, then, remind me: Why are we going to K0643?”
“Because the Drakh are interested in something that’s there, which is probably Shadow-related. Oh, and because diggers have been dying, trying to get to it.”
“Oh, well, of course. Naturally. If there’s someplace where evil is hovering and people are dying, that’s certainly the first place I’d want to be.”
“Then you’re in luck,” said Kane.
“I was kidding.”
“So was I”
Vir shook his head and-not for the first time in his life-the words “Why me?” echoed within it. As always, no answer was forthcoming, although he fancied that he could hear Fate laughing deliriously and rolling on the floor somewhere, amused by his predicament.
Laughing. Yes, he could hear the fates laughing at him. He stood before the energy gate, his thoughts pulled momentarily from the past to the present, and not only could he hear laughing, but also he could detect an eerie howling. It was the voices, the voices that were crying out their contempt for his ambitions, as if to say, “Pathetic little creature … thinking that you-you of all people-could save the galaxy? What makes you more worthy of living than all those around you, who died in witnessing the power before you? “
“Nothing. Nothing makes me more worthy,” said Vir, and he knew it to be true.
The howling increased, and Vir felt himself being lifted off his feet, dragged toward his death. He was surprised to discover that his death was, in fact, something he wasn’t looking forward to …
- CHAPTER 2 -
Vir hadn’t been entirely sure what he was expecting to find when he arrived at the dig site, but whatever he did fancy he’d see, it didn’t match up with what they actually found down there.
Empty buildings. Lots of them.
The entire dig had a ramshackle feel about it, as Vir and the techno-mages made their way through the narrow streets. Actually, “streets” might have been too generous a word. There were assorted pathways that ran helter-skelter through the settlement, but nothing had actually been paved. At some points the paths became so narrow that, if Vir and the others had encountered someone coming in the opposite direction, there would have been a considerable problem in dealing with it. However, that situation never actually presented itself.
There were others around. They heard them more than they saw them, and voices floated to them, carried upon the breeze. It was a very stiff breeze, almost a steady chill that Vir could feel slicing through right to his bones. Occasionally there were people congregating at street corners and in makeshift pubs. Vir caught scattered words here and there, and the words were quite disturbing. They were words such as “disappeared ,” “dead,” “quit,” “afraid.”
“Dead.” That one was said quite a bit.
There was only one other word that Vir heard with any greater frequency, and that word was “haunted.”
Haunted.
Once upon a time, Vir would have laughed derisively at such a word. But his time on Babylon 5 had served as a serious education into the realm of the supernatural … or, at least, it had given him an introduction to the notion that there was more in heaven and earth than was dreamt of in his philosophy . He had lived in a place where people who captured souls and nightmare beings from unknown realms of space had been all too real.
For the men he passed in the settlement town of K0643, it seemed, the line between truth and fiction, between the easily understood and the incomprehensible, had become blurred. For Vir himself, the line had long ago been completely erased. Anything was capable of happening to him. He felt that this was the only possible mind-set for him to maintain, since anything-more or less-generally did have the habit of happening to him.
“I know you.”
The voice startled him. He turned and saw a fairly unremarkable , but nonetheless instantly identifiable Centauri who had just emerged from one of the p
ubs.
Months earlier, a Centauri citizen had been used as a helpless pawn in an assassination attempt on John Sheridan, the president of the Interstellar Alliance. He had been unaware of the part that had been assigned him, and it had only been intervention on Vir’s part that had prevented the citizen from carrying out the murderous design that had been thrust upon him. The individual’s name had been Rem Lanas, and it was Lanas who was now standing in front of Vir, with clear astonishment on his face.
Before Vir could say another word, Lanas grabbed him by the front of his heavy coat. Vir thought for a moment that it was an attack, but then he realized that Lanas was, in fact, imploring him. “Please,” he said, “Don’t take me back to Babylon 5. You … you said we could keep it between us. Don’t tell anyone I’m here. I’ll ... I’ll leave if you want, I’ll-“
“Calm down! For pity’s sake, calm down!” said Vir, gripping him firmly by the shoulders. “Will you take it easy? I have no more intention of turning you over to the authorities now than I did then. What are you doing here?”
“Working,” Lanas responded, appearing surprised that Vir would even have to ask. “Why? What else would anyone be doing here? For that matter what are you doing here?”
“Well ... we’re here to check into some … things. We’ve heard that this place was, well … haunted. And we felt that it would be in the best interests of the Republic to look into it, as ridiculous as the whole haunting thing might sound.” He forced a laugh to underscore the alleged absurdity of the notion.
Lanas was looking at him oddly. “Who is `we’? Is that the imperial `we’?”
“What? Oh! No, no, `we’ as in myself and my-” He turned and gestured toward the techno-mages.
They weren’t there. There was only empty air behind him.
Vir stared dumbly at his open and gesturing hand for a moment , and then said, “-myself and my … fingers. Yes, that’s right,” and he waggled them to display them properly. “That is to say, my fingers and I. I have names for each of them. Would you like to hear-?”
“No. No, that’s … quite all right,” said Lanas carefully, clearly not wanting to offend the man, quite possibly a lunatic , who was standing in front of him.
Suddenly switching his tone of voice, Vir inquired, “There seem to be fewer people here than I imagined there would be. Why is that?”
Lanas seemed to give great thought to what he was about to say. Ultimately, he glanced around, as if concerned that someone might be eavesdropping, and then he said, “Not here.”
“Not here? You mean there are people not here?”
“No, I mean we shouldn’t talk here. Come.”
Turning, he started quickly down the makeshift road. Vir followed, pausing only a moment to glance over his shoulder and confirm for himself that there was no sign of those who had been accompanying him.
Within a few minutes, Vir was sitting in the small quarters that had been assigned to Lanas. To say it was unadorned was to understate the matter. A few sticks of furniture in a one-room domicile in a large, prefabricated building-that was the entirety of Lanas’ living quarters. “I’m sorry I’ve nothing to offer you to drink. I wasn’t expecting company. Not that I would have been able to provide anything even had I known you were going to be here. Minister Durla keeps us on a fairly restricted regimen around here.”
“Does he.”
“Yes. He doesn’t want us spending his time and his money drinking. He believes that eating, working, and sleeping should constitute the entirety of our existence here.”
“And you put up with that?” Vir was appalled. “But there’s more to life than that! There’s…”
“Oh. And he keeps prostitutes supplied in abundance.”
“Ah:” Vir bobbed his head in comprehension. “He, uhm … he does?”
“Yes. He believes they provide a necessary release.” He shrugged. “Apparently they fit into the budget more easily than liquor. Less expensive, too.”
“That’s very frugal of him;” Vir said.
“They actually have an incentive bonus program, where they-“
Vir quickly put up his hands and forced a grin. “That’s … that’s quite all right. I get the idea. I don’t really need to know more than you’ve told me. In fact, I wouldn’t have been upset to know less.” He cleared his throat, and then said, “So, you were going to tell me about…”
“Yes.” Lanas nodded. Despite the fact that it was just the two of them in the room, he still lowered his voice. “Between the mysterious disappearances, and the people who have quit, the workforce has dropped by seventy percent. The advantage is, those of us remaining are being given sizable raises just to keep us here. The disadvantage, of course, is that we might not see our loved ones ever again. That would probably be more disturbing to me if I actually had loved ones.” He shrugged. “I know it sounds insane. But somehow you just wind up adjusting to the idea that people disappear around here.”
“Yes, I can guess that you would,” Vir said, thinking about the abrupt disappearance of the techno-mages. “And do you have any idea what might be causing it? Any clue?”
“None at all. All I know is this: We’ve a primary excavation area in which we’ve managed to get deep beneath the surface of this misbegotten world. A number of men have disappeared along the way, some mysteriously, some running away. We have no idea what we’re searching for, or what’s going on here. But I will tell you what made an impression on me. Minister Durla came here once to inspect the facilities. I saw him several times during his stay here, and every time I did, there was something in his eyes.”
“You mean, like an eyelash?”
“No,” Lanas shook his head in exasperation. “I mean a look, a … sensation. As if he was pleased over the existence of this dig, for some reason that none of us could fathom. I certainly know I couldn’t.”
“And he’s given you no clue as to what you’re looking for.”
“No. The only thing I know is that he increased the shifts. We’re working around the clock now. Day and night. Right now the Odd Squad is on.”
“The … what?”
“That’s what we call them. The Odd Squad. A group of particularly aggressive diggers that sort of ended up working with one another. Word is that they’re all former criminals or some such. Used to hard labor. They thrive on it. Enjoy doing it better and faster than anyone else because they somehow prove something to themselves.” He stopped and shrugged. “Ah, but I shouldn’t be second-guessing other people’s motives . When you get right down to it, who ever knows why anyone does anything, right?”
“Oh, I can, uhm … definitely agree with you on that one,” Vir said.
“In any event, if anyone gets down to the bottom of whatever it is that we’re digging around for, it’s going to be the Odd Squad. They claim they can smell danger and then run screaming toward it. One of them … Ciril, I think his name is … says he’s looking forward to meeting Death so that he can punch Death in his privates and then assail him with a string of off-color remarks. I’m not sure why anyone would want to anger Death; but then again, it’s not my fantasy. In any event, at the behest of the Odd Squad-men possessed if ever I saw them-lights were rigged to provide illumination. That was something I oversaw, actually. Electronics is my field of expertise … although considering the circumstances we keep meeting under, I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought I wasn’t much good at anything. Whenever the-“
Suddenly, a severe rumble rippled up from below them. Vir was utterly disconcerted. The sound was so deep, so all-encompassing, that for a moment he thought a fleet of Shadow vessels was soaring through the sky, their sheer weight causing vibrations as they passed. Lanas, for his part, didn’t seem especially put out. “And we’re getting those more often, too,” he said as the trembling subsided.
“Quakes? Why? Is this area built on a fault line?”
“Not to the best of our knowledge, no. But it keeps happening just the same. No one knows what causes
it.”
We do.
Vir looked up, confused and surprised when he heard that. “You do?” he asked.
“No, I just said we didn’t.” Lanas looked utterly confused. “Was I somehow unclear?”
We know. Get out of there, Vir. Matters are moving faster than we anticipated.
There was no longer any need for hesitation on Vir’s part, for naturally he knew just who was most likely to be projecting commentary directly into his skull. In an instant, he was on his feet, and through clenched teeth he said to Lanas, “I have to go. Thank you for your hospitality.”
“But I wasn’t being particularly hospitable…”
“You didn’t try to threaten me, terrorize me, or toss me into prison. These days, that’s enough for me to consider myself ahead of the game. It’s been charming. Have to go. Bye.”
Rem Lanas stared in confusion as Vir bolted out the door so fast that it barely had time to slide open for him. Then he just shook his head and murmured, “I’ve heard that Babylon 5 does strange things to a man. But until I met Vir Cotto, I never realized just how strange.”
When Vir stepped out of the building, he looked to his right, then to his left. At that point he was tapped on the shoulder with enough force that it caused him to jump slightly, startled. Then he glared at the three techno-mages who were standing exactly where Vir had been looking, moments before. “How do you do that?” he demanded in exasperation.
“A magician never reveals his tricks,” Kane informed him.
“Yes, but you’re not a magician. You’re a cloister.”
“True,” Kane admitted.
“Have no fear, Kane,” Finian said brightly. “I suspect once we are finished with this business, we will no longer be looked upon as cloisters.”