The Vanity of Hope

by G W Langdon

  A colossal soldier dressed in a hard-pressed black uniform entered and stood to attention by the doorway.

  Ba’illi stiffened and put the prism down. “The knight of the realm. She’s coming.”

  The knight had a similar build as General Reuzk and the same strong face and short black hair. Were they related? His gun-barrel straight posture, stern, deep brown eyes, and steel-edged discipline marked him as sure of his place in the world. His gloved hands wrapped around the handle of his polished long-sword suggested a clear calling in life that he could and would defend to the death if duty demanded the sacrifice.

  “Her Majesty, Queen Lillia,” the knight announced.

  Tom set the half-finished puzzle on the corner of the table.

  Queen Lilia glided past the stoic knight. She wore a full length, ruby red, layered gown. A black-trimmed cape covered her wide shoulders and a golden, embroidered dragon, with gems for red eyes, circled her lithe torso. A sparkling tiara rested on her wavy, coal-black shoulder-length hair caressed her soft neck. Sarra was beautiful and could hold her own against any woman in London, but Queen Lillia was… ageless.

  The hem of her gown neither tilted nor rocked as she approached. She had violet eyes, arched brows, high cheekbones, and an even, delicate nose.

  Up close, she was at least three inches taller than he was, perhaps six and a half feet, which made the knight seven and a half feet tall—as was General Reuzk. Her full lips and generous smile lifted his heart. She was a goddess.

  “Hello, Thomas. I’ve been waiting a long time for you.”

  “But I’ve only just got here.”

  “I imagine your head is in a spin, but with patience and trust, you’ll come to understand. We have high hopes for you, but none more than me.”

  She bent lower and addressed Choen who had moved to Tom’s side. “These changing times demand new alliances. A great power has brought us together and we must work as one, or we will all face a bleak future.”

  “The past is best left there.”

  She motioned to Ba’illi. “Take the monks to their quarters. We have matters to attend to.”

  The knight waited for the doors to close then stationed himself to the right of Queen Lillia.

  “Tell me, Thomas, what did you see in Nago?”

  “Nothing that I could explain or make any sense of. A storm the likes of which I never thought possible.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Everything happened too fast. Lightning bolts as if thrown down by Zeus. Mist… shadows, fires, smoke, red beams of lights, lots of yelling. One moment General Reuzk and the soldiers are firing at… a shadow, and the next thing I’m waking up stuffed inside a box with a sore neck.” He looked around his residence. “Why am I here? I should be with General Reuzk.”

  “You are here to be trained as a king,” she said.

  “A king? That’s the last thing I want to be.”

  “Not just any king. A warrior king; a great king.”

  “The kings I knew were scoundrels who waged war because they were bored with their lot. Thousands of good men died, and thousands more mourned their pointless deaths.”

  “I’ll grant you that from what I’ve seen, your kings weren’t much, but we’ll aim higher. Your bitterness tells me war was a personal matter for you. Did you have someone close die in battle?” She drew closer. “Never mind, your hatred of ruin and decay shows you have the heart for such ugly affairs.”

  He scratched his temple. “But why me?”

  “I honestly don’t know why you were chosen. Outwardly, you don’t appear to be anyone special.”

  “General Reuzk doesn’t think so.”

  She briefly glanced at the knight. “Forget about him. Destiny is calling out to you. It’s the greatest sin if you don’t act. If you do not become a warrior king, then you will spend the rest of your life tormented by what you should’ve been, had you the courage. I’ve seen great soldiers pale and flee from the very challenge that would’ve defined their life. A king does not shirk what must be done.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Defeat Decay.”

  He laughed then shrank from her sharp glare. “Decay? What about the Federation?”

  “They’re too busy being infallible, which is ironically why they fail. They’re the reason Decay has come to Heyre.”

  “It’s here!”

  “It lives on Tilas, but its power reaches across space.” She stopped for a moment and resumed more slowly. “Mock as much as you want, but you’re here for this reason.”

  “Maybe I’m here for something else.”

  “No. I’ve seen what you can become.”

  “Couldn’t another king do it?”

  Her rosy cheeks faded, and the sparkle dimmed from her eyes. “There are no kings left.”

  He looked to the knight. “What about him? Couldn’t he be a king? He’s huge.”

  “Force can never win. You must uncover the specialness inside you, whatever the cost. But I won’t lie to you. All who have fought Decay have perished, but you will succeed because you are outside a system that has always failed.”

  He peered around the room. “All this science—the puzzles, and the portal— can’t change me into somebody I’m not.”

  “We will give you as much help as we can. The knight will teach you leadership—how a king views his place in the world. Ba’illi will impart his great knowledge as only he can, about… as much as your heart desires.”

  “And you?”

  “I will be there when you need me. Before, you spoke of thousands dying being a tragedy, and in a small way it was, but billions have died trying to stop the spread of Decay. Entire worlds have fallen, and their Nature has perished.”

  “I’m just one person. It’s not my fight.”

  “Decay will not stop. After Heyre, it will move onto the next planet that harbors life. Eventually, it will settle upon Earth and it will lay every soul bare and remold your Nature to its image.”

  “You ask too much of me,” he said, turning from the interrogation.

  “You were a gamekeeper who worked to keep a natural balance in the world. You wanted to defend the defenseless against the tyrants and bring peace to your small, English world. If you don’t act now, then one day Earth will enter a bleak and eternal dark age beyond anything you can fathom.” She touched him lightly on the shoulder. “Back home, you wanted to make a difference. On Heyre, you get your chance.”

  “How do you know what I wanted back home?”

  She moved away and picked up the puzzle. “I could say your parents are William and Mary, and you’re engaged to Sarra—as Reuzk probably did. Originally, you were planning to go to London after the Midsummer festival to organize a protest against King Henry the Seventh. Dangerous affairs. What if you hadn’t come back? Poor Sarra. All on her own.”

  “Leave her out of it.”

  “I wonder what actually happened to her.” She turned to the knight. “How are you and Reuzk getting along these days?”

  “He’s not speaking at the moment.”

  “Not even about the old times on Tilas.” She half-smiled. “He must be mad.”

  “General Reuzk promised me she was alive, and I’d be with her if you hadn’t gotten in the way.”

  A dark, spectral shadow flashed in her eyes. “Reuzk is a liar. The Federation will swallow you up whole until you were nothing more special than a dataSphere. Here, you have the freedom to fulfill your destiny.” She opened her yellow shoulder bag and placed a clear orb on the high table. She tapped the orb twice and a quarter-sized hologram of Sarra appeared above the table.

  “Please, Tom,” she pleaded, “come to my rescue. General Reuzk is holding me prisoner.”

  He shied away and backed against the window sill. “I don’t believe it.”

  “And so you shouldn’t. I had Vera compile the lightMatrix for a specific purpose, as Reuzk would do. Parlor tricks. Raw data without perspective or a truthful point of reference can be construed to any sto
ry for a weak mind.”

  “What story am I being told, now?”

  “There is only one way to know with certainty if Sarra is alive. You must become a great king.”

  “I cannot save you.”

  “It would be a big mistake to consider General Reuzk your ally.” She leaned down, closer to his ear. “To show I’m being fair and honest, I’ll make you a deal. If at the end of one hundred days you still want to leave then you have my blessing to cross the river and find Sarra. Deal?”

  She stared for a puzzled moment at his outstretched hand. “Of course,” she said, shaking hands. “That’s the custom on Earth.”

  Chapter 13

  Reuzk climbed inside the dataPod and reclined into the bioMemic chair. He entered his P.I. geneSet to authorize the signal from the virtual realm Amie compiled from the orbs recovered off StarTripper.

  “Is Sarra ready to go?” he asked, swinging the headset in front.

  Amie blinked into the dataPod, standing on the footrest dressed in her favorite, red Federation uniform.

  “If this Disembodiment is about the Vipr and Thomas Ryder, that was Lauzen’s doing,” she said. “I cannot over-ride security protocols.”

  “I’m sure he had good reason to make me look a fool.”

  “Lauzen runs a personal agenda. He is a loose end with security settings I have limited control over, and that’s a concern. For now, his meddling is on the fringes, but should he go further... ”

  He cocked his brow. “Fringes? The human is key to acquiring our greatest ally. I would call that ‘dead center.’ Regardless, of how much you protest, you were complicit in his escape.”

  “Lauzen referred to the matter as a ‘transfer.’”

  “The queen has him now and it’s anyone’s guess what she’s actually got planned.”

  “Lauzen assured me…”

  “Have you incepted Sarra’s memories for this realm?” he asked, reaching past Amie to close the hatch. The service has finished, and the church is empty.”

  “As you ordered.”

  “Sarra’s left Tom outside in the shade and is returning to the church out of concern for the effect the vision had on him.”

  “Yes. What do you hope to achieve with Disembodiment? It’s impossible to learn anything new. Running her neurals as an entity separate from my persona could lead to unforeseen behaviors.”

  He lowered the headset. “I hope so.”

  Amie faded to a ghostly apparition and withdrew.

  Twin micro-fine beams of hyper-spectral light shone through his closed eyelids directly onto the optic nerves.

  “Fusion complete,” Amie said.

  He knelt and ran his hand over the dirt floor of the church. He brushed the dirt off and stood up again, reaching to his full five foot six inches. It was strange being so short. “Begin.”

  Sarra appeared dressed in a floral frock with a blue waistband. A blue ribbon tied into a bow on the right side kept her long hair tidy. She carried on her arm a small, woven cradle of freshly cut wildflowers kept fresh with wet moss over the stalks.

  “Thank you,” she said to Father Martin as he took the flowers.

  He sniffed the flowers as he put them in a vase, careful not to drip water on the sermon notes. “They add some much-needed color, and smell.”

  “Father Martin, I’m worried about Thomas since his vision.”

  He ushered Sarra to take a seat on the front pew and sat beside her. “I’ll help where I can. However, he’s a difficult man to… predict? Do you think the strain of killing the Beast of Woolmer led to the vision?”

  “If anything, killing the beast gave him a new lease on life. From what he told me, he could’ve died.”

  “Yes, it was a close call. The townsfolk treated Tom like a super-hero when he only wanted to be left alone.”

  Sarra squirmed on the pew. “‘Super,’ that’s a funny word to use.”

  “A demigod.” He prised the bonnet from her tight grasp. “But that’s not why you’re here?”

  Sarra’s pale cheeks turned rosy in the heat streaming through the stained glass windows. “Do you think we could move out of the light?”

  “Yes, of course. The sun was very bright that day—is bright, today.” He gave a silly little chuckle. “The heat’s even getting to me.”

  They shifted to the shaded end of the pew.

  “He was never the same after what happened that day,” she continued. “I guess the alien demon hunting him and the vision of the end of the world got too much.”

  Tom killed the beast, but stood no chance against Rulg. Best to let me deal with his kind. “End of the world? Can you remember exactly what he said to you outside the church about the vision?”

  “He never said much. Just that it was more than any mortal could stand. He was more concerned about the alien hunter.”

  “The vision, does anything new come to mind?”

  She lifted the cradle onto her lap and edged away.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “So much has happened, lately. My memory’s full of holes.”

  “From memory, Tom said, ‘Leave me alone. I’m not the one.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

  He shook his head. “Perhaps God wants him to do something and he can’t. Do you think this has happened before?”

  She stood up and brushed the wrinkles from her dress. “Mary told me,” she began, eyeing the main doors, “you performed a ‘casting out’ when Tom was a little boy. You must remember that?” She edged to the aisle then dropped the cradle and fled.

  The church doors slammed close in a sudden wind gust. She shook the handles and turned. “Who are you?” she said, pressing her back against the doors. “What demon is inside you?”

  Reuzk wished he’d spent more time studying Father Martin. Sarra was proving adept at noticing the small things, which could have uses later on. He could replay the situation, over and over, but that would negate the purpose of the Disembodiment from Amie’s persona. “Close your eyes, for a moment.”

  She snatched the hat stand and stabbed the pointed end at him. “No more funny stuff.”

  He cast off his guise of Father Martin and the church morphed into Shipwrights Way.

  She lashed out, but there was no hat stand. “What’s going on?”

  “You’re in a dream.”

  She rubbed her arm where the dart struck, and the sparkle left her moist eyes. “Where’s Tom? Have the aliens got him?”

  “Their ship crashed. You, the real you, is asleep in our hospital.”

  “Where is Tom?”

  “He’s alive, but unfortunately he’s not with me.”

  “Where then? I must get to him.”

  “If you trust me,” he said, offering the bonnet. “I’ll do everything I can to get you and Thomas back together again.”

  “Why should I trust a giant?”

  “Because I’m your only hope.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  He looked to where Rulg had blasted into the forest. “Do you want to make a difference in the world?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “Tom wanted to change the world. I only wanted to change the town.”

  “In what way?”

  “To get rid of the vermin who preyed on the unfortunate.”

  As the highwaymen did to your father when you were a child. “What stopped you?”

  She kicked the dry leaves. “The men of the town thought women weak, even if I could’ve beaten half of them in a fight and outrun the rest, except Tom. He was the fastest in town by a country mile.”

  “That much? Little wonder he didn’t fit into your primitive world, which is maybe why he’s here.”

  She held out her hand. “Get Tom back and we’ll change the world.”

  He leaned forward and shook Sarra’s delicate hand.

  “Until we meet again.”

  He lifted the headset and opened his eyes. Sarra was kind, innocent, and loyal. She deserved a better fate. Rulg, you’re going to pa
y for what you did. He plucked the small, bone flute from his breast pocket and rolled it in the palm of his hand. The flute was now barely the width of his spread hand with holes too close together for his thick fingers to play music. He held the flute to his lips and blew a small whistle, the way he had on Tilas as a boy when he’d belonged to a caring tribe and trusted those around him.

  Amie appeared as she was before. “Was that an interrogation or a job interview?”

  “It can’t hurt to have another, loyal ally.”

  “If I was less secure of my position at the heart of the Federation’s activities on Heyre and beyond,” Amie said, “I might assume you don’t fully trust me.”

  “Sarra’s an outsider. A different perspective might shine a new light on how we do things around here.”

  “We don’t need her.”

  He adjusted his collar. “When I say ‘we,’ I actually mean you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Every one of your ancestors has failed their core responsibility to protect the Federation from Decay.”

  “I am different from my ancestors. I am more powerful than they are combined.”

  “You are a fallible machine and I don’t trust you to protect us from Decay. I’ll do what I consider is the best for the Defense of Heyre.”

  “I am omnipotent. Nothing you do compares to what I can perceive.”

  “Let me remind you and President Lauzen that I command the military and you would both do well to remember what the ‘M’ stands for in your name.”

  Amie saluted. “Is that all, sir?”

  “I want full surveillance of our castle contact.”

  “I’ve been running the subroutine since yesterday.”

  “Have you? I want to know his every move, especially if he shows up on our side.”

  “Do you want me to arrange a meeting?”

  “No, no, no. Let him run free for now. I’ll reel him in when the time is right.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Never second guess me, again.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s protocol—nothing personal.”

  Amie blinked out.

  He lifted the flute to his pocket and paused. If the Négus brought Thomas Ryder from Earth to Heyre, could it also be the true reason behind why the Federation had put an outsider in command of their nest of vipers?