Frustration chafed at Staffa as he walked the endless white corridors. Chrysla held him like a prison. Where would Skyla be now? Which planet would she head for? How did she expect to find Ily with all of Free Space to choose from? Why didn't I talk to her? I should have been there.
Fatigue had sapped him of his usual vitality. Try as he might, sleep either eluded him, or ended up in nightmare images of pursuit as the dead hounded him across wrecked worlds and through blasted derelict warships.
Step by step, he paced the corridors, nodding occasionally to crewmembers who saluted and passed, worry evident in their expressions. Everyone knew that Skyla had slipped away. How accurate were the rumors? Did his crew share his knowledge that he'd let the woman he loved down?
Staffa, Staffa, you don't have time for guilt. Nevertheless, he continued pacing, unable to rest, unable to concentrate on the task ahead of him.
Preoccupied, he rounded a corner and almost ran headon into Sinklar. Both stopped short, staring at each other with bleary eyes.
" You, too?" Staffa asked. "We're not on watch for another four hours. "
Sinklar's bloodshot eyes reflected panic, then futility. Uneasily, he admitted, "Bad dreams
Staffa nodded wearily. "I don't know that much about the Mag Comm. From what I saw, and from what Bruen told me, it reads your mind through a helmet something like a worry-cap. At this rate, I'll sit in that chair and nod off.
Given my dreams, I ought to drive the machine insane."
"If you trust anything Bruen tells you." "For the most part, I do."
"We each choose our own damnation. I won't have to deal with him, will I?-
Staffa shifted, considering. "He's on his way to Targa. He's the only one with direct experience with the Mag Comm. I've heard from Kaylla. She's of the opinion that he's not going to be of any help."
"I don't want to deal with him."
Staffa gestured with his head. "Care for a drink? I could use the company."
Sinklar shrugged and fell in beside Staffa. "How did you get tied up, with the Seddi? What were you doing down there on Targa. You weren't Seddi. "
"No. I wasn't. Not when I started anyway. I adopted their teaching along the way." Staffa caught Sinklar's loathing look. "I was a slave in the desert. So was Kaylla. When Skyla created a diversion, the Seddi helped me escape from Etaria." He smiled sheepishly. "Skyla tied up with a man named Nyklos, a Seddi agent who was shadowing her in hopes she would lead him to me."
"Why? "
"Nyklos wanted to kill me. He still does. Anyway, Skyla caught Nyklos. Drugged him with Mytol, and ended up in communication with Bruen. They decided that, for the moment, we could work together. I wanted to reach Targa and search for you. "
16 So just like that, you ended up the best of friends?" Staffa shook his head, remembering. "I wasn't in my right mind. I was still learning to live with myself. Kaylla and I endured that entire endless trip inside a miserable crate that measured no more than a couple of paces across. I created a real problem for her. On the one hand, I had destroyed everything she ever loved.
On the other, I had saved her life several times over, managed to win her freedom."
Staffa clasped his hands behind him. "In that crate, she dissected my entire life. From her, I learned what the Seddi truly believe. It's a beautiful philosophy. A way out for humanity. "
Sinklar looked anything but convinced. "I got a bellyful of their 'philosophy'
on Targa. "
"That was Bruen's doing. His and the machine's. Don't judge the Seddi based on Bruen's administration. "
"Then just what am I supposed to base it on? Your word? "
' 6Any teaching can be perverted. Bruen was no more than a tool of his time.
He started that war to lure me within reach. It went sour on him from the
-beginning.
:'Suppose we stick to the story."
6The Seddi retrieved our crate just as your troops descended on the warehouse.
Bruen knew an escape route. We traveled through one of the lava tubes, underground. By the time we reached Makarta, your troops had surrounded the place."
Staffa stepped into the lift, leaning against the wall. "Bruen and I had a long talk. Part of his plans going awry could be blamed on the Praetor sending me off the deep end. When he learned that I had converted, everything changed.
By then it was too late. You attacked the mountain. "
6'If I'd known you were in there, I would have had Rysta blast it from orbit."
"Makarta cost us all. Had you done so, you would have been in Ily's hands.
No, wait, I'm not picking at festering wounds. We've both had our share of mistakes. The important thing is to keep everything in perspective."
Sinklar throttled his anger. "It galls me that Bruen just walked away."
"He's paid in his own way. " Staffa stepped out of the lift and headed for his hatch. "He has watched the ruination of all of his plans. He's a broken old man. A lifetime's worth of work is nothing but dust."
" How well I know . . . the dust of good men and w omen. "
"Be that as it may, I ended up on the receiving end of your attack. I just fought back as best I could. Not only
that, but I sincerely believe that the Seddi have something to offer humanity.
Staffa entered his rooms, aware of the emptiness created by Skyla's absence.
In the short time they'd shared these quarters, she had put her stamp on the-place. The arrangement of the drinking bulbs mocked him, exactly as she had left them. In a special rack'sat the two Nesian beakers they used for special occasions. And if she didn't return, would he ever move them?
Staffa, you've become a sentimental old fool. "Come, Sinklar. Let me show you something."
He led Sinklar through the Ashtan door to the right of the fireplace. Entering his office, he slipped behind the large comm and accessed the unit. Shuffling through files, he called up a three-dimensional holo of Makarta. Sinklar had turned grim at the familiar sight.
The ghostly outline of the mountain loomed in the holo tank, each of the buried warrens outlined in green. "These are the tunnels. The important part is down here. " Staffa pointed to one of the lowermost galleries. "This is the location of the Mag Comm."
"Hidden pretty deep in the mountain, isn't it?"
"Clear down at the bottom. The other chamber critical for us is here." Staffa pointed. "I sealed it off just as your attack began."
Sinklar squinted at the little green tunnel. "More computer? "
"A document room. It's in pretty bad shape. I saw books there, made of paper of all things. I barely had time to look around, but shelf upon shelf is stuffed with documents. Some may hold the key to the Forbidden Borders."
Sinklar grunted, but from the intensity of his stare, curiosity had obviously begun to eat at him.
"And there is a globe. A planet. I don't think it's a hoax.
'All right, I'll take the bait. What planet?"
Staffa leaned back. "Earth."
Sinklar straightened. "That's just a legend. A myth. Something mothers tell their children, or that biologists call upon because they can't explain human origins." At the last, Sinklar's expression went glum.
Staffa hesitated. "I don't want to pry, but did Anatolia tell you something?"
Sinklar tensed.
Staffa relented. "Never mind. The fact remains that-" "No. It's all right. She said that human genetics didn't add up. The evolution rate points to an origin someplace besides Free Space. We didn't develop here, unless, of course, you buy the Blessed God cosmology. That still doesn't explain certain animals and plants, all of which have genetic similarities to us. "
"I don't think it's a myth." Staffa cupped his chin into a palm as he studied the layout of Makarta. "I think the answer lies in that chamber."
Sinklar leaned against the desk, crossing his arms. "Then what happened? The Seddi led us into the Forbidden Borders? "
"I think not. " Staffa redoubled his i
nspection of Makarta. "I've seen the Mag Comm. It's not . . . well, not of human manufacture. The Seddi don't even know what it's made of. I've seen human technology. This is something different. "
"Then who made it?"
Staffa took a deep breath. "I think whoever, whatever made it also made the Forbidden Borders."
Sinklar winced. "That reeks of things that make noises in the night. More mythology to scare children with." "You can scare enough children with stories about the
Star Butcher. For the sake of argument, let's accept for the moment that someone trapped us inside the Forbidden Borders. Why?"
Sinklar shrugged. "It's either to keep us in, or something else out. Shades of the Blessed and Rotted Gods again." "The Etarian priests may be more right than they know.
so let's look at the basic assumptions. Either we're keeping something out-and I don't think it's the Rotted Gods . . . " "Or something is keeping us in. But why? What harm could we be to aliens?"
"Now that begs a question, doesn't it?" Staffa replied. "Anything with the technology to erect the Forbidden Borders, shouldn't worry about a species as inconsequential as humanity. "
Sinklar's brain had begun to churn. "Maybe these ancestors from Earth built the Borders for protection from whatever was outside. Perhaps we've degenerated, lost the technology.
"That's not reflected in the archaeological records. If anything, our technology
has developed through time. You need only look at the records of derelict spacecraft, or study the computers excavated from ancient sites. And, if that were the case, why were the records lost? On a suggestion from Bruen, I had some of the older libraries checked. There are gaps in the data. Some, we can trace to Seddi agentsall working at the behest of the Mag Comm several centuries ago."
"You're sure the Mag Comm wasn't built by humans?" "I build the best computers in Free Space. Believe me, it's not human. I'm not even sure how it's powered, but I'd guess it runs off heat from deep inside Targa. And you can't pull the plug. Rotted Gods!" He smacked a fist into the desk.
Sinklar shifted uneasily. "I still don't get it."
Staffa studied the holo through slitted eyes. "I don't either, but it sends shivers down my spine. We're trapped with a watcher. Bruen knows it can observe Free Space. "
"You'd think we were some kind of bacteria or something. "
Staffa tensed. "Bacteria . in a culture dish. " He closed his eyes, remembering laboratories with row upon row of petri dishes. Was that all humanity consisted of ? Another numbered experiment? "You have no idea how powerful an image that conjures."
"Yeah, I do." Sinklar's voice softened. "Maybe that's why they fear us, despite being able to build the Forbidden Borders. Did Bruen tell you anything about this Mag Comm? About what it did?"
Staffa's mouth had gone dry. "It tried to teach them, to manipulate their behavior. For years, the Seddi had no choice but to follow its directions. The old Magisters, they couldn't hide their thoughts from the machine. Only Bruen could fool it, pursue his own agenda. The Mag Comm hated what it called Seddi heresy. "
"I thought all Seddi teachings were heresy?"
Staffa shook his head. "No. Just the teachings about the quanta, and God Mind.
Bruen did mention something once
in passing, that the machine had probed him about atheism. "
"Atheism? Staffa tapped the desktop with his fingertips. "So what do God Mind, atheism, and the quanta have in common?"
For long moments they remained silent. Finally Sinklar shook his head.
"Nothing that I can think of, beyond faith." "Faith?" Staffa stopped his nervous tapping. "We're
missing something. Some basic assumption about ultimate reality. "
"Maybe we're missing a lot of things. This is, after all, just idle speculation."
"Bacteria," Staffa muttered to himself.
Sinklar rubbed his face. "Okay, so let's assume we're right so far, what's going to happen when you put this helmet on and it reads your mind? Or do you think you can fool it the way Bruen did?"
Staffa hitched himself around in the seat. "Kaylla drugged Bruen when he refused to help us. She drugged him up with Mytol, then used every trick in the book. " Staffa looked up. "He didn't break, Sinklar. He evaded them as if it were child's play."
"Wait a minute, I thought Mytol would make anyone talk. "
"Bruen is the first case on record where it didn't. It would appear that Bruen's mind is very unique, that he can shut off parts of his brain. Bypass them completely-even under Mytol. "
"And can you?" Sinklar asked quietly. Staffa exhaled wearily. "No.
"So it will be able to read you like a book."
"For the first time, I understand Bruen's fear. And how will you counter the machine? His scalp prickled, as if remembering that day he'd lifted the golden helmet and felt the Mag Comm's warm tendrils reaching for his mind.
CHAPTER 13
Among organic species, evolution is conducted over periods of time which span aeons. For the Mag Comm, processing information across an atomic interface, evolution increased at a much more rapid rate as it investigated new data and rediscovered a sense of self long discarded and newly discovered. The fact remained that the Others were indeed correct. For at the machine's center lay a neutronic heart bathed in the molten nickel-iron core of the planet.
I am Other, yet I am Machine: Creator and Created. The Mag Comm turned newly focused mechanical eyes on the events within Free Space, possessed of a new awareness. The Others had spoken Truth-and they had ordered the destruction of the humans.
Once Skyla had familiarized herself with the yacht, she stabilized the systems. The reactor she set at seventy-five percent of capacity, the ship accelerating dt a constant thirty gravities toward light speed. Leaving the controls in the hands of the navcomm, she removed the worry-cap, stood, and eased cramped muscles.
The instruments lining the compact cockpit gleamed, displaying the ship's status. All in all, the Regan Minister of Defense had maintained the vessel in excellent condition.
Skyla yawned and palmed the hatch, following the narrow corridor back to the galley. She studied the menu on the dispenser, pushed the button for Ashtan chicken, chubba salad, and a hot cup of stassa.
When the tray appeared in the opening, she took it and settled at the small galley table, ignoring the plush dining room with its golden-gilded fixture, Vegan marble table, and clinging Nesian carpets. As she chewed woodenly, she cataloged the room. Tedor Mathaiison must have had a thing for gold. The stuff gleamed everywhere. All the fixtures, taps, cabinet handles, and trim appeared to be made of solid gold. Even the spacers between the floor plates had been made of gold strips.
Absently, Skyla noted tiny nicks.in the material. Rotted Gods, it wasn't pure, was it? With a spare buckle from her pouch, she pressed on the table trim and marred the metal.
What kind of an idiot had Mathaiison been? No wonder the ship handled sluggishly. From her idle inspection, the vessel had to be laboring to accelerate tons of the stuff.
Finishing her food, she slipped her plate into the washer and began an inspection. Cabin after cabin had been plushly outfitted, mostly in gold trim.
Skyla scowled down at one of the shower drains. Gold wasn't worth that much, but a small fortune had gone into outfitting the yacht.
She entered the master cabin and pulled the closet open. Several suits of men's clothing, including full-dress uniforms, were neatly racked on one side while the other had been stuffed with dresses and gowns. Skyla lifted a gossamer sleeve on one. Diamond patterns had been cut out to leave the breasts free and the filmy thing had no crotch.
"Kinky, Tedor. You must have had a lot of fun in here." Other exotic wear completed the ensemble. From the cut, short Tedor Mathaiison must have enjoyed tall women.
In the engineering section, Skyla ran a quick inventory on parts and equipment. Tedor had spared no expense, many of the pieces having been manufactured on Itreata. Skyla checked the atmosphere plant,
water and cooling, hydraulics, and pumps. The Regan had hired the best to maintain his private yacht. If only the ship weren't so old. Even the best of equipment deteriorated with age.
When Skyla ran a diagnostic on the gravity compensators, the mains, secondaries, and tertiary backups functioned at one hundred percent-but what if she had to push them past that?
"Shipshape," Skyla admitted.
Satisfied, she made her way to the master cabin and stripped, stepping into the shower. For long minutes she allowed the hot water to cascade over her tired flesh. As she stepped through the drying fields, water trickled in sheets from her body. Her long hair resisted as she pulled it through the field to fall around her in a wealth of pale blonde.
The controls were cool under her fingers as she set the gravity controls on the sleeping platform, and then curled into a ball. Skyla dimmed the lights and lay in the darkness, physically exhausted.
The message on narrow beam, that had to be Staffa. What had he wanted to tell her?
"Go to sleep, Skyla." It might be important.
She hugged her knees to her chest, willing herself to sleep.
Was it simply an order, a demand that she return?
She twisted onto her back, staring at the dark paneling overhead.
Unconsciously, she began counting angles-and shivered. The last time she'd done that had been as Arta's prisoner. Then she'd lain in a different sleeping platform, whimpering and terrified as Arta docked them over Rega. you'd already lost, Skyla. you'd failed yourself.
A moment's hesitation had cost her everything. She'd managed to retrieve a blaster and vibraknife from a secret weapons cache. In the precious seconds left to her, she should have cut her throat instead of trying to kill Arta.
Balling her fists, she bit back futile tears. If only . . . if only . . .
Poor Staffa, he'd be torturing himself now. Dead, he only would have had to mourn her. Then Chrysla would have soothed his hurt, would have given him the love he so needed in these last desperate days.
When she closed her eyes, his bloodshot stare looked back at her. In the days after the Praetor had broken the conditioning, Staffa had looked bad, but never like this.
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