by David Mack
“Hang on,” she whispered to Valerian. “It’ll be all right.” She knew what Fletcher would call this, and she didn’t care.
Forced to choose between letting Valerian die or letting her be transformed by the healing gifts of the Caeliar, death no longer seemed like a victory, and she no longer thought of surrender as a defeat.
It was simply the price of survival.
* * *
Despite having spent most of her life in Axion, Hernandez had never before seen the chamber into which she followed Inyx.
It was long, narrow, and high-ceilinged. Bizarre, semi-organic-looking alien machines were crowded into the tight space. Silvery cables drooped on long diagonals high overhead, and at the top of the laboratory was a broad, clamshell-shaped skylight through which she saw the black sky dotted with stars.
Inyx carried Valerian to a long, flat metallic table that Hernandez grimly thought of as a slab. Its surface was dark gray, several centimeters thick, and unadorned. As he set the dying woman on the table, a sepulchral droning began to fill the echoing silence. Looking around, Hernandez saw several of the machines in the room begin to pulse with a violet light.
“Please watch from behind that barrier,” Inyx said, pointing to a transparent wall that curved around a large, odd-looking console. “You will be safer there.”
She did as he asked and walked behind the protective shield. Motion from overhead caught her eye. It was an ungainly contraption, long and asymmetrical and covered with alarming protuberances. It glowed with the same purple radiance as the other machines in the lab, and it glided through the air without any obvious means of support or locomotion. She tensed as it settled into position directly above Valerian.
Watching the device move into place, she noticed more subtle movements, much higher up along the far wall. There she saw a row of wide observation windows, in front of which more than a score of Caeliar had gathered. That was when she understood that this wasn’t simply a lab—it was an operating theater, and Valerian was to be that night’s main attraction.
On the other side of the barrier, Inyx levitated himself a few meters off the floor and made some minuscule manual adjustments to the large machine. Apparently satisfied with his modifications, he floated back to the floor and joined Hernandez behind the see-through wall. “We’re almost ready,” he said. “I just need to make some detailed scans of her brainwave pattern to be certain the catoms are set to the correct frequency.”
“What’s going to happen to her?”
Manipulating the console’s controls with his tendrils, Inyx replied, “I’m going to infuse her body with the same sort of catoms that now constitute Caeliar bodies. In Sidra’s case, the concentration will be infinitesimal, but it should be enough to let us repair any damage to her vital organs. Once that’s done, we’ll bring her back to consciousness and let her mind make contact with the gestalt.”
“What if she doesn’t understand what’s happening?”
“The gestalt has gentle ways of making itself understood,” Inyx assured her. “Whether she will be able to understand the message will depend greatly on her frame of mind.” He turned and eyed a wall of liquid-textured panels that were strobing with information faster than Hernandez could decipher. “Excuse me a moment,” he said, moving toward the rippling screens. “I have a few more details to check before we begin.”
While he worked, she busied herself with studying the master control panel. Unable to discern most of its operational components, she looked up again at their Caeliar audience and saw a familiar figure lurking behind one of them. It was Fletcher, who Hernandez deduced must have changed her mind about boycotting the procedure. One of the other Caeliar must have brought her here, she figured.
“It’s ready,” Inyx said. “This is your last chance to change your mind, Erika. Once the procedure begins—”
“Do it,” Hernandez said.
His tendrils moved over the console and never seemed to make contact, yet toggles changed positions and functions were triggered. Ominous churning noises filled the operating room, though Hernandez had no idea what was causing the sounds, which were followed by deep, rhythmic percussions that shook the floor. The incandescent core of the machine above Valerian turned a blinding shade of magenta.
Valerian was bathed in rose-colored light.
Her physical transformation was subtle—her skin regained its healthy color, and her eyes suddenly seemed less sunken.
“Now we rouse her,” Inyx said. “This will take a few seconds.” He made more fine adjustments to a delicate crystal console in front of him and Hernandez. Then he looked up and waited to see what would happen, his own sense of nervous anticipation as tangible to Hernandez as her own.
Valerian’s blue eyes fluttered open.
And she screamed.
Her piercing wail, pure terror as sound, filled the lab.
Then she began thrashing, pounding her fists on the metal slab, kicking wildly—all as she kept on screeching.
“Turn it off!” Hernandez cried. “Make it stop!”
“It’s too late,” Inyx said. “We—”
Panicked, Hernandez bolted from the console, tried to run to Valerian, hoping to pull her off the table. Before she could round the safety wall, Inyx snared her in his grip, which was stronger than she had ever imagined it would be. “Don’t, Erika. It’s not safe.”
“Let me go!” she pleaded. “I can’t just let her—”
Then the screaming stopped, and Valerian curled in upon herself, hands pressed over her face like a mask, her eyes wide with horror and shock. Hernandez froze in place, and Inyx let go of her and returned in a flurry of motion to the console.
“Synaptic failure,” he said, his dismay and surprise evident. “Something in her mind rejected contact with the gestalt.” His hands began to work faster.
“What’s going on?”
Growing more concerned, he replied, “Her disharmony with the gestalt is causing the other catoms in her body to fall out of sync with the city’s quantum field.”
Frustrated by the opacity of his reply, she angrily prompted, “Meaning …?”
“Her body’s rejecting the infusion,” Inyx said. “The catoms are becoming chaotic.” He turned, stepped between Hernandez and her view of Valerian, and tried to lead her away from the console. “You should step out, Erika, quickly.”
She shook off his guidance. “Don’t tell me what to—”
Words caught in her throat as Valerian started screaming again. Shrieks of agony, primal and inchoate, erupted from her … and then her body began to dissolve. Her skin sagged and her torso caved in. She clawed at her face with skeletal hands as her eyes sank into her skull. Then her cries of pain and fear rattled into silence, and what was left of her collapsed into a boiling froth that turned to black dust.
Hernandez stood paralyzed, in anguished silence, and stared at the carbonized stain that was the only evidence of Valerian’s gruesome demise. Beside her, Inyx shut down the machines, which returned to their dormant state with a long, dwindling groan.
He looked up at the Caeliar spectators. Then he turned away from them in what Hernandez could only imagine was shame. “The Quorum demands my presence,” he said in a subdued voice. “I’ll send someone to escort you back to your residence.”
Like a pile of leaves blowing away in an autumn wind, Inyx disincorporated in a rush of warm air. Reduced to a flowing stream of golden motes, he rose like smoke and vanished into the dense machinery that lined the high walls.
The other Caeliar who had gathered along the observation deck’s windows departed, leaving only Fletcher, who stared down with cold anger at Hernandez.
Tears of guilt and rage streamed down Hernandez’s face. My God, what have I done? Sidra was at peace. All I had to do was let her go. Why couldn’t I just let her go?
She looked up at Fletcher and said, “I’m sorry.”
Fletcher turned her back and walked away.
Alone in the darkened
lab, Hernandez stood in silence. Failed and friendless, overwhelmed by sorrow and shame, she felt that she finally understood what it meant to be in exile.
* * *
The tree was long dead, its branches bare and brittle after decades in the dark. It sat on a mound of dusty earth that once had been a miniature island at the end of a long, rectangular pool of dark water. The pool was gone now. In its place was a dry stone cavity some two meters deep.
Hernandez stood beneath the expired tree and remembered it as it used to be, before Axion’s panicked flight into the past. She and her landing party had met in the shade of its leafy boughs to weigh their chances of escape. Its shelter, however illusory, had been a comfort to her and to the others. Now its exposed, gnarled roots and fissured bark served to remind her only of life’s fragility—and its brevity.
Something unseen stirred the air. She inhaled, caught a faint hint of ozone, and felt a warming tingle on the back of her neck. They were familiar sensations to her now. An illumination from behind her brightened the tree trunk, but she didn’t need to turn around to know that Inyx had joined her.
“I thought I might find you here,” he said.
She drew a line with her bare left foot in the coarse sand. “It’s not like I have anywhere else to go.”
He stepped forward to stand beside her. “I came to say that I’m sorry. For my failure, and for your loss.”
“Thank you,” she said. “But it wasn’t your fault. It was just an accident.”
“I still feel responsible,” he said.
She sighed. “Don’t. The decision was mine. You only did as I asked. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me.” They stood together for a short time, saying nothing. Her mood took a melancholy turn. “I wonder sometimes if every decision I’ve made since the day the Romulans ambushed my ship has been wrong.”
Inyx sounded perplexed. “Why would you think so?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” she replied. “I risked traveling at relativistic speeds to seek a safe haven instead of waiting for a rescue. I took my ship to an unknown world instead of setting course for home. I led my people into captivity here.” She paused as the wrenching impact of her recent tragedies hit her in full force. Her voice caught in her throat as she continued, “I missed or ignored all the warning signs that Johanna was planning on committing suicide. And instead of letting Sidra die with peace and dignity, I made her final moments agonizing and humiliating … because I was too scared to just let her go.”
Inyx asked, “Did your decisions seem rational at the time?”
She shrugged. “I suppose.”
“In that case, unless you’ve secretly possessed the power of precognition all this time, I would posit that you made the right decision in at least some of those moments. Even if you feel the outcomes were negative, it could be argued that some of the alternatives might have been far worse.”
“In my mind, I know you’re right. But part of me can’t shake the fear that all I’ve been doing since the ambush is failing the people who depended on me, who trusted me. Maybe it’s not rational to think so, but it’s how I feel.”
He made a strange grunt of acknowledgment. “I understand, Erika. After your shipmates’ interference helped spark the destruction of Erigol, I grieved for millions of my brothers and sisters—including Sedín, my friend of several millennia. She’d castigated me for persuading the Quorum to grant you and your crew sanctuary on Erigol. In her eyes, I had defiled our home. At the time, I was certain I had made the right and merciful decision, but after Erigol was lost, I … I wasn’t sure anymore. I felt that I’d failed my people and jeopardized the Great Work.”
The profound pathos of his confession moved Hernandez. She turned toward him and let herself look at him, in an effort to see past his stern, alien visage. His grim countenance remained inscrutable, but she could hear the changes in his voice and his breathing, and she saw the vulnerability and openness of his body language. It was the first time that she felt as if she could understand the nonverbal cues of his species.
He continued, “Even when the Quorum exonerated me, I didn’t believe I deserved to continue as Axion’s chief scientist. Not after my lapses in judgment.”
“But you went on,” she said. “You found a reason.”
He looked at her. “Yes, I did. It was you.”
She was caught off guard. “Me? I don’t understand.”
“Because you sought me out, in the Star Chamber,” he said, calling Axion’s observatory by the name she had given it in jest. “You came and asked to help us, and to be taught. I knew that you were burdened by losses, as I was. But you coped with your suffering by seeking to aid others. You reminded me that sometimes the way to heal oneself is to tend to others first.”
“Wow,” she said. “And I thought I was just trying to make the days go by a little faster. I had no idea I was such an inspiration.” Flexing the stiffness from her fingers, she winced at the brittle dryness of her skin, a reminder of time’s ravages and her advancing years. She masked her anxiety with glib humor. “What’ll you do when I’m gone?”
“Do you intend to leave the city?” he asked with genuine surprise. She wasn’t sure if he was joking, sincere, or just especially obtuse as a consequence of denial.
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” she said. “I probably don’t have much time left, Inyx.”
A somberness settled upon him. “You mean you’re dying.”
“I don’t know that I’d put it quite like that,” she said. “I’m not saying I’m at death’s door, for heaven’s sake. My body’s just starting to wear out, is all. It’s part of life, Inyx. Everything that lives has to die eventually.”
“Yes,” he said. “Eventually. But some die sooner than others, and many before they should or need to.”
Hernandez nodded. “On Earth, we call that Fate.” She reached out and rested her hand on his bony, grayish arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you by bringing up dying.”
His voice sounded smaller, softer than usual. “I’d prefer that you didn’t.”
“Talk about it?”
“No,” he said. “Die.”
His earnestness almost made her laugh. “No offense to you and your supertoys, but I don’t think it’s your call to make.”
“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “It’s yours.”
* * *
It had been several weeks, or possibly even months, since the twilight had descended on Fletcher’s friendship with Erika. Though they continued to live in residences off the same courtyard, Fletcher had taken pains to avoid contact with her captain since Sidra’s grotesque desecration by the Caeliar’s untested technology and Erika’s clouded judgment.
Whenever Fletcher saw Erika dining alone in the courtyard, she made a point of sequestering herself in her residence until after Erika had left, no doubt for another turn of collaboration with the Caeliar scientist in his observatory. Once, a few weeks earlier, Fletcher had emerged after Erika’s departure to find that one of the white pawns on the chess board she’d carved had been moved from its starting position at c2 to c4.
So, Fletcher had mused. She wants to play.
Unwilling to indulge Erika’s feeble attempt at contact, Fletcher had picked up the board and pieces and taken them back into her suite of rooms and tucked them inside a drawer.
The thought of the chess set inside the dresser had nagged at her ever since, to the point that she had begun having recurring dreams about chess. In one she played against a hooded opponent. The outcome of that game, she knew, had been preordained. Playing it to its end was merely a formality. She’d tried to take the inevitable loss in stride.
In another nightmare, she was a piece on the board, trying to exert her queenly power by dashing diagonally across the ranks to strike down a haughty bishop, only to stumble and fall over her own feet. When a cavalier reached down from his steed to help her back up, he’d laughed. “What were you thinking?” he said. “You know pawns can’t move
diagonally except to attack, and there’s no one here within your reach.”
There were as many variants on her nightly reveries as there were strategies for chess. She’d look down to find all her pieces missing except her king, who stood completely exposed. Or her king would betray his own army and cut them down, one by one. Or she would pick up a piece to move it, only to discover that all her pieces were carved of sand, which would crumble between her fingers and be carried away in a whisper of wind.
Her pieces burned and turned to ashes. They’d rebel and cut her fingertips. The entire board would turn black and become a portal into the void, and all the pieces, white and black alike, would fall through it and vanish into the emptiness of nothing.
That day Fletcher had awakened, opened her eyes, and gritted her teeth against the cramps and pains that had become as familiar to her as old friends whose company was obnoxious but was tolerated for lack of an alternative. Seeing no sign of Erika in the courtyard and no lights on in the other woman’s residence, Fletcher retrieved the chess set from her drawer, carried it out to the table in the middle of the court, and set it up, with the white pieces facing herself.
Then she waited.
Lost in her thoughts, she had no regard now for time’s passage. It slipped past as it always had: seeming to move impossibly slow in the present, the future always so far at bay, until the day when one looked back on uncounted expired moments and realized how few must then remain.
Fletcher had played both sides of an entire game of chess in her thoughts by the time Erika stepped through the entryway into the courtyard. The captain hesitated, as if fearful of intruding on Fletcher’s privacy. For a moment, Fletcher considered picking up the chess pieces and retreating again into her private spaces. Instead, she made eye contact with Erika and allowed the moment to linger. Then she reached forward and moved the king’s knight to f3—a clear invitation to play.