1-The Long Night of Centauri Prime

by Peter David

  But he still seemed lonely.

  And that was something that Senna decided she was going to do something about.

  The Centauri worker wished that he were anywhere else but here.

  He had wandered off from the main dig site, feeling tired and thirsty and fairly fed up with the company of his fellows. All of them seemed hideously happy to have some kind of employment , however marginal, and they were laboring under some sort of bizarre delusion that somehow the needs and interests of the great Centauri Republic were going to be served by working at a useless archaeological dig on some damned backwater planet, using antiquated tools and having no clear idea of what it was that they were actually looking for.

  “Idiots,” he said, not for the first time. It was at that point that he decided he had had it. He took his dirt cruncher aimed it just below his feet, and fired it straight down. By all rights, by all instructions, there shouldn’t be anything there in particular . He was determined to take out his ire by burning the cruncher out completely, operating it at high speed for longer than it was meant to operate.

  The cruncher pounded about ten feet straight down, and then something came back up.

  The worker never really had the opportunity to figure out what it might be. All he knew was that one moment he was happily pushing his cruncher to the maximum, and the next some sort of black energy was enveloping him and he heard a scream, which he thought was his own except he realized it was inside his head, and not quite like anything he had ever heard before.

  Then he heard nothing else, ever again, as his body was blasted apart in a shower of gelatinous body parts that spattered over a radius of about ffty feet. Since he was spread so wide and far, no one who subsequently stumbled upon any part of his remains truly understood what it was they were looking at.

  When he didn’t show up for sign-out that evening, he was marked down as absent without leave, and his pay was docked accordingly. Meantime, eighty feet below, something went back to standby mode, and waited for a less abusive summons.

  - chapter 17 -

  Vir tossed about in his bed as the giant sucker-woman approached him.

  There was a look of pure evil in her eyes, and her arms were outstretched, and she was waggling her fingers, and at the ends of those fingers-Great Maker protect him-there were the suckers. Each one smacking its “lips” together, hungering for him, ready to attach themselves to him and try to suck the life clean out of him. Somewhere from all around him, he heard Londo’s voice shouting, “Run, Vir! Run! Don’t let her get to you!” Vir, however, was rooted to the spot, his legs refusing to obey his commands. He wanted to run away, but he simply couldn’t.

  She drew closer, closer still. Her bald pate gleamed with a pulsing black light, and she laughed with a sound that had once filtered from the forest as primitive beings had squatted around their fires and glimpsed fearfully into the darkness. When her lips drew back in a hideous simulated rictus of a smile, he could see her fangs dripping with blood, and the suckers were nearer, still nearer, and there was no escape …

  That was when Vir finally managed to get a scream out, and the scream was so powerful that it roused him from his dream, forcing him to sit up, gasping, looking around, trying to figure out what in the world had just happened.

  As he did so, he realized that there was the insistent buzzing of the door chime. His bleary eyes focused on a clock near his bed. It was the middle of the night. Who in the world was showing up at this insane time.

  “Go away!” moaned Vir, flopping back onto his bed.

  There was no reply from outside other than the renewed pushing of the door chime.

  A warning trilled in the back of Vir’s brain. What if it were an assassin, hoping to catch him confused, disoriented, and particularly vulnerable. At that point, however, Vir simply didn’t care. The notion of someone blowing his head off, at that moment in time, seemed preferable to trying to go back to sleep, where sucker-fingered women might be lurking about in the recesses of his consciousness, waiting to prey upon him as soon as he relaxed his guard.

  “Lights dim,” he snapped irritably, and the lights in his quarters obediently came to half. Even that modest lighting was enough to make him feel as if his eyes were being seared from their sockets. He rose from his bed, snagged his robe, put his right arm in the left sleeve, twirled in place as he sought in futility to catch up with the trailing sleeve, snagged it, realized his error and then yanked the robe off and put it on correctly. The buzzing continued throughout all of it, to the point where Vir didn’t even bother to find his slippers, but instead padded barefoot across the room as he shouted, “I’m coming, I’m coming! Hold on already!”

  He got to the door, disengaged the locking mechanism, wondered if he was going to be staring down the muzzle of a vicious weapon when it slid open and decided that he definitely didn’t care at this point.

  The door opened wide, and he let out a short, high-pitched shriek.

  “Is this a bad time?” asked Mariel.

  Vir couldn’t quite believe it. What is she doing here?

  She was waiting for his response, and he sought to find his voice. “Uh … no. No is … fine. I wasn’t doing anything. Well … I was sleeping … but, you know, that really doesn’t require too much effort. In fact, it’s a bit of a waste of time. There’s so many other better things I could be doing. You know, I think I’m just going to give up sleep altogether. There’s far more efficient ways to go about living your life, you know, than wasting time sleeping. I mean, I’ve been getting nine, ten, twelve hours sleep, but I think I could do with a lot less. Like … one. One would be good. Or … three, which is what I had tonight,” he said, double-checking the clock to make sure he had that right. “Yes, three is good. Three is plenty. I can’t believe how well I’m functioning on just–-"

  “Ambassador … may I come in?”

  Again, as was often the case, Vir had to fight the impulse to glance behind himself. “Yes. Yes, by all means. Come in. Come in.”

  She did so, glancing around the suite as she did. “My, my. I like what you’ve done with the place, Vir. Back in Londo’s day, it tended to look a bit like a museum. A Londo Mollari museum, considering he had portraits of himself all over. How long has it been, Vir?”

  Not long enough. “Quite … some time, Lady Mariel,” Vir told her. “Four, five, six years. Time flies when you’re having fun. Or when you’re having … well … whatever it is that I have.”

  “I remember quite clearly the last time I was in this room.”

  “Really? When was that?” Vir was hoping that his sense of feeling flustered would depart soon.

  “When Londo had a small orgy with myself and Daggair. Both of us, at the same time. Would have been three had Timov been willing…”

  That was definitely more than Vir wanted to know. He stepped quickly away, wishing that he could cover his hands with his ears, but that would hardly seem professional. He also dismissed the notion of shouting “la la” at the top of his lungs. “I was … not expecting to see you here, Milady…”

  “Mariel, please. We have no need for formalities,” she said softly. “You are, after all, an ambassador. I am simply the former wife of a sitting emperor. I see no differences between us.”

  Eyeing her uncomfortably, Vir said, “I … see a couple.” He cleared his throat loudly. “Can I get you something? Something to drink or… something?”

  “That would be quite nice. Are you sure this is not a bad time?”

  “Oh, don’t be silly!” he said as he poured her wine from his private stock; the stuff that he only consumed when he was extremely nervous. He tended to go through a bottle a day. “You just caught me a bit off guard, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I wasn’t expecting to be here myself,” Mariel said as she picked up the wine and sipped it daintily. “I was to connect on a shuttle through here, but the connecting flight met with a bit of an accident.”

  “No one hurt, I hope,
” he said.

  “Not hurt. Just dead. I’m told the fireball was quite spectacular , although naturally it didn’t last all that long, since it was in space at the time.”

  Vir felt his tongue drying up. He tossed back an entire glass of the wine in one shot and started pouring himself another.

  “Anyway … since I am here on Babylon 5 until a new ship is dispatched, I thought I might touch base with you. See how you are getting along. I have such fond memories of you, Vir.”

  “You … you do?”

  “Yes, indeed.” She stared into the contents of her glass and smiled, apparently from a pleasant recollection. “Do you know what I liked about you then, Vir? Shall I tell you?”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “You made me laugh. It’s not always easy for a man to get a woman to laugh, but you managed it so easily. You had a charming facade you created back then, although I could see through it rather easily, of course.”

  “What … facade would that be?”

  “An air of barely controlled panic.”

  “Ah. Well,” and he laughed uncomfortably, “you saw right through that, I guess. Clever you.”

  “Yes, indeed, clever me. So … fill me in, Vir. I have been away for quite some time.” She interlaced her fingers and leaned forward. “Tell me what’s been going on, on Babylon 5.’

  “Oh, uhm … well … all right.” And he proceeded to rattle off as many major events as he could recall that had occurred in the past five to six years, including the Shadow War, the inauguration , and the telepath wars. Mariel took it all in, every so often interrupting with a question, but most of the time simply nodding and listening. When he was done some time later, Mariel looked almost breathless. “My,” she said. “It’s been rather busy. And how exciting this must have all been for you.”

  “I don’t know if `exciting’ is the word I’d use,” Vir admitted. “That almost makes it sound as if I was enjoying it. It’s been more like, that my life has been moving at high speed, and I’ve been doing everything I can, not to be thrown off.”

  She laughed. She had a beautiful laugh. Vir wondered why he had never noticed that earlier.

  “And you,” he then said.” You must have been very busy, too, I’m sure.”

  She said nothing.

  He stared at her as he waited for her to pick up her half of the conversation. But nothing was forthcoming. “Mariel?” he prompted.

  “I’m sorry,” she said coolly. “I just assumed you were having a little joke at my expense.”

  “What? No! No, I’d never-! What joke? What do you mean?”

  “Londo tossed me away, Vir,” she said. “I mean nothing to him, and he let the entire world know it.” She had been standing until that time, but now she sat on the edge of one of the chairs. And Vir began to see that she was actually not remotely as cheery as she had originally appeared. Indeed it now looked as if she was doing everything she could to hold back tears. “You have no idea what it is like, Vir, to be so completely diminished in society. To be tossed aside. To have people looking at you and laughing behind your back, because you’re considered a joke.”

  It took no more introspection from Vir than to consider his own life up until that point. To consider the fact that he had once been the family joke, tossed away to Babylon 5 and made attache to the ludicrous Londo Mollari, so that he would be out of the way and not embarrass anyone.

  “I think I do,” said Vir. “But … but look at you!” he added waving his glass of wine around so vehemently that he came close to spilling it. “How could anyone treat you as a joke! You’re so … so…”

  “Beautiful,” she said hollowly. “Yes, Vir, I know. And as such, men would seek me out as a symbol of their own status. But another symbol hangs over me in addition to my beauty. It is that of castoff. Cast off from Londo Mollari. It stays with me, haunts me. No man wants to be seen with me because…” Her voice sounded as if it were going to break, and Vir felt his hearts going with it. Then, with visible effort, she composed herself. “I … am sorry, Vir,” she said softly. “I … miss my old life. I miss the parties, the social whirl. I miss the company of men who wanted to be seen with me… “

  “There’s a party tomorrow! Right here, on B5,” Vir said quickly. “A diplomatic gathering being hosted by Captain Lochley. It’s not a big deal, she has them every other month or so. Feels it’s good for morale, that kind of thing. I haven’t been going lately, figuring that-well, never mind. In any event, I could go tomorrow, with you. That is to say, we could go. You and I.”

  She looked up at him. Her eyes were glistening. “That’s very kind of you, Vir. But I don’t really think you’d want to be seen with me…”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! Truthfully, I’m not sure why you’d want to be seen with me.”

  “Are you serious?” she asked. “To be seen with the ambassador of the Centauri Republic to Babylon 5? Any woman would be honored. But you may be harming your own status by squiring me…”

  “Are you kidding? Practically everyone here hates Londo,” he laughed. Then he stopped laughing. “I … guess that wasn’t so funny, actually. Besides … who’s to know?” he added quickly, as he hunkered down next to her. “Listen … when you look at a Drazi … can you tell one from the other?”

  “Not … really,” she admitted.

  “Well, neither can I. And I’ll bet you that Centauri probably look as much alike to Drazi as Drazi do to us. Drazi and all the others. The point is, they’re not even going to know who you are, most likely. Not unless you wear a sign that says `Londo Mollari’s ex-wife.’ “

  “I had one, but I think I left it back home.”

  He laughed at that, and so did she, and when he laughed he patted her on the hand and she put her hand atop his, and he felt something akin to electricity upon her touch. He almost jumped from the contact.

  “Are you sure about this, Vir?” she asked.

  “Absolutely sure. Look, you’ll go-“

  “We’ll go,” she corrected him. “We’ll go, and it’ll feel just like the old days for you. You’ll have a great time.”

  “We’ll have a great time.”

  “Right. We. I’m sorry, it’s just that … well . . :’ and he sighed, “I’m not all that accustomed to thinking of myself as part of a `we.’ Not for a very long time.”

  And then, to his shock, she tilted his chin back and kissed his uplifted lips gently. Very, very gently, no heavier than a butterfly’s flutter. It was still enough to send a wave of static running along his hair.

  She asked what time the party was. He told her. She told him where she was staying in Babylon 5, and where he should come to pick her up. He nodded. Then she kissed him again, not quite as lightly this time, and Vir suddenly felt as if there was too much blood in his body.

  When their lips parted, with a faint smacking sound, Mariel said to him, “You are such a sweet man. I had forgotten what it was like to be with a sweet man. I’ll let you get back to sleep.” And with that she excused herself and left. It wasn’t until Vir’s aching knees informed him, some minutes later, that he was still crouching, that he thought to stand up. Then he eased himself onto the chair and sat there, stunned.

  When Mariel had first shown up at his door, he had been seized by waves of panic. He remembered the horror stories Londo had told of her, remembered the chaos that had seemed to be left in the woman’s wake. He remembered that Londo had almost died thanks to a present that she had given him, although she had claimed that she’d had no idea that it was remotely dangerous when shed given it to him. He remembered the aura of darkness that had seemed to cling to her, that had made her almost frightening to look at.

  All that had been washed away by the utter vulnerability she had projected upon arriving in his quarters. He had felt all his hesitations, all his concerns melting away, one by one, until he had been left with only one raw, stunned thought:

  She’s one of the ones Londo got rid of? He must have been out of his min
d!

  The ambassadorial reception turned out to be one of the turning points of Vir’s entire career … if not his life.

  It was almost as if he were attending it while having an out-of-body experience. Normally, if Vir attended such functions-as he had once or twice in his career-he remained firmly planted, back against a wall, nodding to some people, making small chitchat with others, and frequently holding Londo’s drinks when Londo ran out of hands to hold them with-which was often. In short, when Vir had been there, his entire contribution to the evening was that he had … been there.

  Lately it had been something of a horror show for him. He had spent many years making what he felt were friends among the population of Babylon 5. But he had spent the past year and a half watching them disappear, one by one. Londo, Lennier, Delenn, Ivanova, Sheridan, Garibaldi, even G’Kar -he who had made Vir more uncomfortable on one occasion, dripping blood from his hand in an elevator, than Vir had ever been in his life before or since. All of them were gone.

  Oh, Captain Lochley was there, and she was polite enough, but she tended to keep him at an emotional distance, as she apparently did with everyone. And Zack was there, but Vir always felt as if Zack was regarding him with suspicion, waiting for Vir to pull a weapon or something. That might have been Vir’s imagination, but nevertheless, that was how he felt.

  As for the rest of the members of the Alliance, well … they had very little patience for him indeed. It wasn’t personal; they hated and feared all Centauri. Somehow, that didn’t make it any better. It was little wonder that Vir had stopped attending the gatherings altogether.

  This night, though … this night was very, very different.

  This night, Mariel was there in full force.

  When Vir went to pick her up, he was stunned to see how small her room was. It was barely large enough for someone to turn around in, and it certainly wasn’t located in one of the more upscale sections of the station. Nevertheless, Mariel managed to look radiant. She was attired in a remarkably simple, unadorned dress, but its lack of decoration was part of its strength, for there was nothing to distract from her pure beauty.