The Cosmic City

by Brian K. Lowe

  Walking toward us was an exceptionally beautiful woman, dressed in a white flowing robe, her auburn hair piled atop her head in what resembled a Gibson Girl style from my own era. She examined us with open curiosity as we approached, but as I returned her bold appraisal, she suddenly turned as white as her dress and literally ran past us into the next section.

  “Who was that?”

  Maire glanced about. “Who was who?”

  “That woman. The beautiful woman in the white robe.” I turned toward the direction she had fled. “She saw us and ran away.”

  “That way?” Lecaudia pointed. I nodded, and he took off at a sprint.

  Maire had stopped. “What woman in a white robe? There are no women on board wearing white robes, I can assure you.” Despite her flippancy, she was deadly serious.

  And I could only shake my head. “I saw a woman. A beautiful woman with long auburn hair and a flowing white robe.”

  “I couldn’t find anyone,” Leucaudia reported. “But I’ve notified Security.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Maire told him. To me she said sotto voce: “I think it’s more likely you shouldn’t have gotten out of bed yet.”

  There was a sentry stationed outside the doorway leading to the command center, a Thoran with a no-prisoners mien that matched the heavy sidearm he carried.

  “Her Ladyship Maire and the lord Admiral,” Lecaudia announced. The guard nodded respectfully, but did not surrender his place until he had looked us all over quite thoroughly.

  “What is he looking for?” I whispered.

  “Weapons,” Maire said as softly. “No weapons in the command center under any circumstances.”

  “Ah. Good idea.”

  “The control surfaces are all ray-shielded, but if somebody started shooting, the refractions could go all over the place.”

  Finding us to be free of forbidden objects, the sentry pressed his hand against the door, which opened, Lecaudia preceding us through.

  “Her Ladyship and the lord Admiral on deck!”

  The captain and entire bridge team snapped to ramrod attention. I had no right to be as surprised to see Captain Lobok as I was. Obviously, he had been expecting me; he had known of my appointment while I was still unconscious, and any resentment he might have felt at having to take my orders was by now so perfectly masked by his mental shields that I could feel nothing but the stainless honor of a loyal officer. It made me ashamed of myself for wanting to flaunt my rank in front of his face. Some admiral of the fleet I was turning out to be.

  “As you were,” I instructed, and if the term was perhaps unfamiliar, the meaning was clear. Everyone except Lobok returned to his duties. The bridge was a circular room perhaps forty feet across, with screens crammed onto every vertical and most of the horizontal surfaces that I could see, but beyond that general impression, I had no time to take it all in.

  Lobok stood inside a painted circle some ten feet wide. There was no captain’s chair; probably it could be extruded from the floor at need.

  “My lady, my lord, please join me in the command section.”

  At Maire’s faint pressure on my arm, we both stepped across the painted white line at the invitation I had not even realized that I had been awaiting. She was helping me find my bearings so subtly that until that moment I had not even known she was doing it. Having been so reminded of my place, however, I settled into my Army habits like I was putting on my old uniform. To begin with, it was up to me as the senior officer to speak first.

  “Captain Lobok, congratulations on your assumption of command.”

  He acknowledged me with the faintest nod. “Allow me, Admiral, to congratulate you, and to express my gratitude at your recovery.” There was the faintest pause, as if he half-expected me to take issue with how I had come to be injured. “And please accept my report, sir. All systems are reporting full capacity; the Procyon awaits your pleasure to get underway.” In other words, where are we going?

  “Captain,” Maire answered for me, “this is a sensitive mission. Please activate the privacy curtain.”

  At once we were surrounded by the gauzy veil of silence that I had seen in the Council chamber in Dure when we confronted the Council with Farren’s treachery 20 years ago. The crew members outside of the command circle had been reduced to hazy phantoms. No sound reached us from their stations, and I knew nothing we said could be heard outside. I felt Maire relax.

  “All right, Lobok,” she said. “You know we’ve taken Director Wilner on board, and you know he didn’t come willingly. So I won’t insult your intelligence. We have reason to believe that an active time travel device may exist somewhere, and that Director Wilner can help us find it. If it isn’t shut down, the consequences could be catastrophic. Obviously, we can’t risk this information getting out. Between us, the Council’s grip on things isn’t as tight as it would like people to believe—which is why,” she said, looking him in the eyes, “they don’t know about this yet. You know the kind of bureaucratic wrangle this could cause, and you know how long it can take them to come to any conclusions. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “My lady, I fought the klurath. Without the Lord Admiral, our fleet never would have gotten off the ground. If you want to go ahead and present this to the Council in a nice, neat package, then, with respect, I don’t care if they spend the rest of their lives arguing about it—afterwards.”

  Maire smiled thinly. “In that case, captain, I will obtain the coordinates of the first target area from the Director and turn them over to you immediately.”

  Lobok took down the privacy curtain and I heard the muted buzz of a telepathic command. Within seconds the crew was preparing to leave, and I realized that Maire had already done what she promised, in the blink of an eye and with the speed of thought. Not for the first time, I wondered exactly why she needed me at all, since she seemed capable of handling any obstacle single-handedly.

  Then I remembered her story, and how our friends had stepped into the breach when she could not.

  “Captain Lobok. I require a favor.”

  “Of course, sir.” He was not so fast with his shields this time, and I felt his mixed curiosity, anxiety, and irritation. “How can I help?”

  I leaned in and lowered my voice. “I understand The Dark Lady’s crew has been confined to their docking bay for…security reasons.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I understand, and I do not want to interfere with your running of the ship. But there is one crew member who is not Thoran, Arlen Timash.”

  “The gorilla.”

  “Exactly. I would like him to have the run of the ship. The Thorans may stay put, but I may need Timash, and I would not like to have to fetch him every time.”

  “Oh. Of course, sir.” He hesitated. “Sir, I believe that some of the Thorans are armed.”

  “Hmm. I see your point. I will talk to Timash.”

  “Thank you, sir. I will alert Security as to your wishes.”

  “Thank you, captain.” As I turned away, Maire came up to me.

  “What was that about? What do you need Timash for?”

  I grinned guiltily. “Nothing. But it was too hard to resist.”

  “Hm. Well, I can’t say I blame you. But come down to the lab section with me,” she said quietly. “There’s something you have to see. I’m afraid you’re not going to like it.”

  Chapter 14

  A Friend in Need

  So unsettling and hurried had been the events since I awoke that until I saw the small silver ball nestled in a cup of fiery blue light above a holographic desktop, I had not even realized that I did not have the Library with me. Instinctively my hand slapped the place where it usually rested in my pocket, and found nothing. I turned a questioning stare onto my wife, but before I could ask, she took my hand.

  “We found the Library with you when we brought you back on board The Dark Lady, but the Librarian wouldn’t answer. At first we just assumed it wasn’t programmed to respo
nd to us, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that didn’t make sense. The Librarian is more than just his programming; even if you couldn’t give him specific instructions, under the circumstances he would have reported to me, or to Timash. So I brought it in here. Our technicians have been working on it.”

  Looking at the small sphere, I felt just as if I were visiting a comatose friend in the hospital—no, not a friend, a family member. The Librarian was like a favorite uncle, at once chummy and condescending. He had been my closest companion and only confidante for twenty years. The thought of losing him made me want to cry.

  I gripped Maire’s hand more tightly, but at that moment a technician came up to us and I remembered in time who I was. The veil of command covered me and hid any emotions. Gently I disengaged from my wife’s fingers.

  “What exactly is wrong with it?”

  “Primarily, my lord, it’s been, well, battered is the best word I can come up with. It looks like it’s been out in the field for years.”

  I did not take my eyes off of the Library. “You have no idea.”

  “I understand it was also taken out of a crashed airship. These units aren’t made to stand up to that kind of punishment.”

  “It was not taken out of a crashed airship,” I said. “It crashed the airship.” The technician’s eyebrows shot up. “It saved my life. Fix it.”

  “We’ll do our best, my lord,” he said hurriedly.

  I turned my full attention upon him at last. “You will do better than that. You will fix it.”

  The technician stepped back. “O-of course, my lord! There’s a Library technician in Crystalle—he’s the best there is! I’ll consult him right away.” And he turned and did his very best not to run from the lab.

  Maire took my arm. “They won’t rest until they fix him—at least they won’t now.”

  I blinked. “I had no idea Nuum admirals commanded that kind of obedience.”

  “They don’t. You do.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Because you’re Keryl Clee, the Ghost. You practically engineered a revolution, then you disappeared from the middle of the ducal palace and you weren’t heard from for almost twenty years. Now you’re back, bigger than life…and don’t forget that you have the best mental shields than anyone has ever seen. You have no idea what that means. Mental shields are a huge status symbol among my people. Half of them don’t know what to make of you—and the other half think you’re from the Home Planet.”

  It was my turn to take a step back. “Really? They think I came from—wherever your ancestors came from?” Matters which had puzzled me, the reactions from some of the Nuum I had met, the strange respect which even enemies like Farren had appeared to hold for me, all became much easier to understand. “And that’s why you picked me for your lord admiral.”

  “It was one of the reasons,” Maire answered. “Along with all the others. But I’m not going to waste the opportunity. It’s not like I can tell them the truth.”

  “I dislike leading by lying,” I said slowly, taking a breath. “But if I have to lead by omission, I agree we might as well put it to good use.” With one last glance at the Library, I said: “And we should get started. We only have a little time.”

  “Then we have someone to see. And you need to try to keep him from being too scared.”

  “I had no idea that technician would react that way! Why would I want to scare anybody?”

  Maire kissed me quickly. “Not you, me. He’s scared I’m going to kill him. And he’s right.”

  Chapter 15

  A Shocking Confession

  Dr. Wilner was pressed into the furthest corner of his room before we had even stepped across the threshold.

  “Keep her away from me!” he demanded, pointing at Maire. I had never seen a man so consumed with terror. My respect for my wife was beginning to edge into the realm of awe. For the director of temporal studies, my feelings were far more basic, but since he could not read my thoughts or even my emotions, he had no idea until I seized him by a handful of shirt and pulled him up to eye level. He squealed.

  “The lady is no longer your greatest concern,” I said with a growl. “Who was behind those river monsters and what were they doing out there?”

  “You can’t read my mind!” he sputtered. “I have rights! I am a Nuum! I am the Director of the Chronologic Institute! I demand to speak to Lord Milorner!”

  I glanced back at Maire.

  “The governor of Xattaña,” she said.

  “He’s a member of the Council of Nobles! He is my nephew! I demand to go home!”

  I silenced the little worm with a glare, studied him for a moment, then put him down.

  “Maire, I think we should take the doctor home. In fact, we can leave him right where you picked me up, so we know exactly where to tell his nephew he is.”

  “We won’t be able to get there until after dark,” she replied.

  I smiled at Dr. Wilner. “I doubt that will be a problem. I survived. I am sure you can, too. Someone will find you. I know they have eyes out there.”

  His knees gave way and he began to slide down the wall. “No—you can’t…”

  Maire moved in closer. “Can’t what, doctor? Can’t leave you to the mercy of your fellow citizens? The way you wanted to leave my husband out there?”

  “Tell us how it works, Dr. Wilner. Tell us about how you use those monsters for sport!”

  “All right! Please stop! I’ll tell you!” Tears running down his face, he tried to curl his arms over his head in an attempt to keep us at bay. He was broadcasting so much fear we were going to have an armed security detail in here any moment. I indicated as much to Maire, and she blanked out for an instant as she transmitted the proper commands.

  “I can make it easy for you,” I promised. “Those monsters are hybrids, mechanically-altered to obey commands, with cameras in their eyes. But you don’t set them on each other, do you? You could never control them, they could never share the river, if you allowed that. What do they hunt every night? Why do they come out onto the plains?”

  “Thorans! We set a few Thorans loose every week. Sometimes we even give them weapons, spears and the like.” He swallowed noisily and wiped at his face. “It never helps.”

  “Gods above,” Maire whispered. She stumbled away.

  It was all I could do to control my own breathing. Wilner had fallen silent, almost as if he himself had finally come face-to-face with the evil he had described. I stared at him, small and hunched and terrified, and all I could see was those people—how many? Hundreds? Thousands?—who had gone through what I had gone through, but no one had swooped in to save them at the last instant. They had died in horror and pain and darkness… I could understand why Maire had said she wanted to kill this man, only she had merely lusted for revenge on my behalf. If I had not known that we needed him, I might well have carried to the nearest outside hatch and tossed him out.

  Perhaps when this was all over I would.

  “Who is in charge of this slaughter? Who knows about it?”

  “Everyone! Everyone knows about it. The entire city watches. My nephew, my nephew is in charge. He inherited the job from his father, my father’s brother.” Dr. Wilner spoke slowly, brokenly. I should have hauled to his feet again and shaken him until my rage was spent, but it was already draining out of me. Even in the pits of the Vulsteen, where we had been pitted against breen, our tormentors had had their reasons. This was nothing was wanton and decadent cruelty.

  “When the time comes,” I rasped, “you will help us to analyze the ruins and look for any evidence of time machinery. You will do what you are told, when you are told, and you will not ask questions. You will not speak to anyone we have not authorized you to speak to. If you obey all of your instructions to the letter, we will deliver you for trial. If you do not…if you do not, I will leave you on the plains at night. Do not try to leave this room.”

  Taking Maire by the arm, I left Dr. Wilner to
his conscience.

  “You heard what he said about Lord Milorner?”

  Maire nodded. “I had no idea. I knew some cities treated their Thorans worse than others, and I know that any kind of rebellion is crushed outright, but this? This is murder. And the whole city is part of it?”

  We were in a busy corridor, and even though crew members were trying their best to pretend to ignore us, Maire was near to tears and I doubt that I looked anything near composed. I entered the first compartment I found, ordered the crew member out, and shut the door. The walls were covered with holographic charts and meters; I could only hope that whatever the woman had been doing in here, the ship could function without her for a few minutes.

  I would not need that long. Maire was already regaining the diplomatic mien that had guarded her thoughts so well in the past.

  “We have to deal with this,” she said, “but not now. If we don’t stop the time fractures, none of it’s going to matter anyway.”

  I stared at the dials and gauges without seeing them. “What I cannot understand is how such a thing could have gone on for so long without anyone noticing. And Lord Milorner is a member of the council!”

  “I’m afraid that may answer your question. I can’t speak to how every single member of the council sees the Thoran question. I don’t think most them would condone something like this, but some might.” Maire shook her head sadly. “I’ve talked to my cousin Lottric about this, but nobody else. It was one of the reasons I used to take long trips on The Dark Lady. The Nuum have been in charge of Thora for over three hundred years. We’ve gotten complacent. If the klurath had played their cards right, they could’ve given us a much tougher fight. You’ve seen how many members of the Council there are, maybe a dozen. The governor of every city is supposed to have a seat, but most of them don’t bother to attend any more. They’re too busy running their own affairs—and gods know what that means. Look at Xattaña. I have no idea what goes on in Katak, or Malleborne, or Ken-Ken…