by Chris Reher
“What?” he groaned finally, blinking into the early morning light peeking through the open window. How marvelous this soft, clean bed that was easily three times the size of the one he used aboard his ship and infinitely more comfortable. How wonderful the cool breeze flowing past his face, the only part of him not covered by this cozy blanket. He buried his face into the pillow and tried to doze off again.
“Seth, it’s morning now.”
“No, Khoe, it isn’t.”
“It’s light out. I hear people across the hall.”
“Delphians don’t appreciate sleep,” he opined. “Neither do you.” When she said nothing more he opened his eyes to see her sitting stiffly on the edge of his bed, staring at nothing. “What’s wrong?”
She lifted her shoulders. “Bored.”
“Nonsense.” Aboard the Dutchman she spent long hours with his archives while he slept, having developed a peculiar fondness for stories about mythical beasts and heroes. But she had also learned to withdraw into a silent resting state after learning that physical beings often required and valued times of solitude and privacy. It also meant less of a draw on his thorium inventory, for which he was grateful. “They must have something to entertain you here.” He waved at a display platform in the corner of the room. “Look, 3-D even. Just don’t hack into their system. They won’t appreciate that.”
She said nothing.
Seth sighed deeply and propped himself up on an elbow. “You’re worried. I can feel that.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. These people, these Delphians, have such purpose. All this machinery and all this knowledge they have. They see so much. I am scared what they’ll find when they look at me.”
He frowned. “You have too many thoughts. That’s just the way they are. They are actually a very friendly bunch. It just takes a while to get close enough to see that.”
“I know. I’m not scared of them. I’m scared of me.”
“What? Why?”
She turned to look at him, which meant that she was looking at herself, through his eyes. He was still not used to the odd perspective that would present to her. Over these past few days she had sometimes asked him to stand before the reflective surface of his decon station so that she could see him, too. There she made him turn to show various angles and finally declared that she approved of what she saw. He smiled at the memory.
“Don’t laugh at me,” she said.
He tugged on her arm. “Come, lie down. I’m not laughing at you. Why are you scared?”
She stretched out beside him. “I don’t really know. They’re going to look at me and tell you that I’m just some unknown tiny clump of particles.”
“Well, we know that. But I wouldn’t say just. You’re not just anything.”
“Everything I am out here is because of you. What you see. How you see me. Without that I’m nothing at all.”
“Stop that, Khoe. It’s not true. You are what you made yourself to be. From what you’ve learned about us.” He picked up one of her long, thin braids and tickled her nose with it. “No one can make that for you.”
She said nothing for a while. Finally: “I don’t know if I want to go back.”
He blinked. “You don’t?”
She shrugged. “The place where I come from is beautiful, in its own way. We’re at peace, not like you out here. We play and we dream and we enjoy each other in ways you can’t really understand. We can merge and come apart again and we can be anywhere.”
“Sounds magical.”
“Maybe. But there is so much to see out here. To feel. It’s harsh and then it’s hot and then cold and loud, but there is such variety of everything. I want to see more of that.”
He smiled. “So don’t go back. Not right away anyway.”
She peered at him. “I can’t keep taking up space in your head, Sethran. It’s not fair.”
“Am I complaining?”
“Well, not now. But you get impatient sometimes. I can tell.”
“We all get impatient with each other sometimes. Caelyn thinks I’m the most annoying Centauri he’s ever met. But we’re good friends.”
“You don’t mind, then?”
“Not even a bit. We’ve got to figure out what’s going on with your people. Maybe the Delphians can help; maybe we have to turn to Targon. Let’s not worry about what comes later. Who knows, maybe you’ll get tired of me by then.”
She smiled slowly. “I’m so glad I found you.”
“Yeah, I’m well-connected.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He looked into the deep violet eyes, suddenly very aware of her lying here next to him in his bed. She had done that before, but he felt ever more removed from the fact that she was merely a construct of their combined thought processes. Although she wore a loose-fitting tunic of vaguely Feydan design, it clung to her body in ways that made a man’s mind wander too easily from the subject of conversation. He touched a hand to her cheek, feeling the smooth, warm skin beneath his fingers. “I’m glad you’re here, too,” he said, watching his fingers travel over her chin and then down along the graceful line of her neck.
She shivered.
“You can feel that?”
“I think I can. I know what this would feel like to you. I can take that from you.”
His gaze travelled to the full lips, curled at the corners in that quirky, not-Centauri way that had caught his attention before. Without considering much further, he bent to touch those lips with his. Her quick intake of breath when he did this echoed the sudden rush of endorphins both of them felt. She returned his kiss, hesitantly at first but then with growing ardor and rarely had this felt so right inside his own head.
Or his body. When she reached up to pull him closer he drew back with a gasp, shocked by his sudden physical need for her. His last shred of conviction about her true form had flown out that open window when he kissed her, leaving only the woman here in his bed. He sat up and scrubbed his face with his hands. What was happening to him?
“Seth?”
He shook his head, unable to think, unwilling to look into her face. He felt her sudden apprehension as much as he heard it in her voice.
“Seth!” Someone banged on the door to his room with a striking lack of Delphian decorum. “Shan Quine has arrived. He’ll take the meal with us if you get up now.”
“Khoe,” Seth began and turned to her but she had withdrawn. He was pretty sure it was not, as usual, to give him privacy during his morning ablutions. Angry with himself and still feeling the soft lips he had kissed, he showered, barely noting the soothing hot water for which he yearned during the long journeys aboard his ship, got dressed and heeded the call to breakfast.
The communal lounge, where only last night he had shared a meal and conversation with some of Caelyn’s colleagues, was empty this morning except for Shantir Quine, a Delphian woman he had not seen before, and Caelyn. They looked up expectantly when Seth joined them at a table set carefully in deference to their esteemed visitor. Caelyn’s hair was neatly braided and he wore a traditional blue vest looking oddly formal on his lanky frame.
“Seth,” Caelyn called. “Come join us. This is Shan Quine and Shan Saias.”
Seth gestured a respectful greeting to the Delphians before sitting. “I am honored.”
Like many of his peers, the elder Shantir wore a knee-length blue tunic over loose pantaloons gathered at the ankle. The blue braid was nearly black, hinting at an advanced age that his unlined face did not. His rank did not require him to acknowledge lesser beings but he nodded graciously at the newcomer.
Are you going to appear? Seth sent to Khoe. Shantirs don’t talk to just anyone. This is about you, remember?
She shimmered into view and hovered near Caelyn’s shoulder.
None of them missed a sudden start from the Shantir when she did. He looked past Caelyn as if to find Khoe there.
“She’s here, isn’t she?” Sa
ias said. Her severe features were softened by clever layers of blue curls and a smartly styled wrap around angular shoulders.
“Shan Saias leads our team here at the tower,” Caelyn explained. “I’ve given them what you told me about Khoe. She has worked with us on many projects but sub-space is her specialty.”
“And that which is found within sub-space,” the woman said, still looking at the Shantir. “I have the feeling that some of our theories may be about to take a new turn?”
“Possibly, Elder Sister,” Seth said. “Sub-space physics is not my field.”
“May we see… your visitor?” The scientist picked up a dough-wrapped breakfast portion and nibbled daintily.
“Of course. She’s a little nervous. Tell me about your theory.”
“There are several. But we have on many occasions detected quantum particles in sub-space that defy current thoughts about what we can expect to find there. Simply put, we’ve found sudden restructuring of the way they connect into very complex patterns. We’ve suspected a certain resonance or other event to suddenly trigger this organization when certain conditions are met.”
Seth looked up when Khoe gasped. “She’s right.”
Told you they were smart.
“We haven’t been able to duplicate the effect in the lab. But we’ve started to replicate the resonance with the intent of trying this in sub-space. If it works, it should cause a sort of tipping-point where these particles combine to create the patterns we’ve found.”
“Are you sure no one is actually working on this now?” Seth asked. He watched as Khoe sat on an empty chair beside the scientist and carefully matched the woman’s erect posture. He tried not to smile when Khoe lifted her chin and tried to stretch her neck to achieve the graceful tilt of the Delphian’s head, perhaps forgetting that she could simply create any neck she wanted. There was something so much more endearing about Khoe’s mop of white braids compared to Saias’ stylish coiffure.
“We probably would have heard of that,” Saias said, unaware that Khoe was copying the motion of her hand as she spoke. “Some of us have suggested that sentient life is possible outside our known physical system. If this is true, taking our experiments into sub-space could have devastating effects. I have often wondered if our brutal tinkering with keyholes for the sake of travelling is disruptive to such life.”
Khoe shook her head.
“She says ‘no’,” Seth translated.
The physicist looked at Seth as if surprised by his presence. “Oh,” she said. “To be honest, I hadn’t even expected so definite an answer.” She pondered her biscuit. “We have so many questions.”
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Khoe said to Seth.
I’m not hungry. “From what she’s told me, our traverse does not actually intersect the sub-space matrix they inhabit.”
“You’re upset,” Khoe said. “Because of earlier.”
I’m not upset! Will you pay attention?
“Then how did she get aboard your ship?” Saias asked.
“That’s what I hope you can tell us,” Seth said to her. “Have you detected this phenomenon via the Rishabel breach?”
She shook her head. “Keyholes, and the jumpsites we turn them into, exist of course only in real-space. So if there is a pattern, a contact between these particles, the dimension of space has nothing to do with it. Distance has no meaning. Location has no context. Once this trigger has joined them, these particles could be millions of light years apart and still work in perfect synchronization. It’s doubtful that our kind will ever be able to truly understand sub-space.”
“And yet we exploit it as we see fit, using technology like a hammer,” the Shantir said, reminding them of the once-habitable moon of Scorria where, generations ago, a keyhole was found. A single attempt to expand it, using a parked cruiser, had thrown the moon out of its orbit and destroyed all life there. Only two other keyholes had ever been identified as intersecting a planet’s orbit and both were now tightly guarded by Air Command while it passed by. “I’m not surprised that our intrusions now cause harm to others.”
Seth inclined his head in acknowledgement, uneager to engage in a debate about Commonwealth expansion. “So we don’t even know if this is happening only out by Rishabel. Khoe fears that this… harvest of her people will continue to the detriment of their species. A key member of their population was taken and that loss is now threatening everyone. Your trigger, maybe. We’d like to find out who is doing it and how. And why.”
“Exploitation, perhaps,” Caelyn said. “These entities may be useful to us out here.”
“That would be a shame,” the Shantir said. He pushed his chair back from the table. “Shan Sethran, I’m afraid my curiosity is overcoming my appetite. Please ask your visitor if I may meet her.”
“Are they always so polite?” Khoe said.
They are Delphian. Are you ready?
She nodded, looking like she’d rather run from the room. Instead, she came to stand slightly behind him.
“Please proceed,” Seth said.
The Shantir leaned over to him and, with the barest tap of his fingers on Seth’s neural interface, established a link. His eyes travelled to Khoe at once to appraise her in silence.
Unable to disguise her impatience, Saias tugged on the Shantir’s sleeve. “May we join you, Shan Quine?”
He nodded absently and reached over to touch her hand, then did the same to Caelyn’s. Khoe shrank back when all four of them stared at her.
“What?” she said defiantly.
Seth took her hand. After only the briefest hesitation, she allowed this. “They’re just bursting with curiosity, Khoe. You’re a myth come to life.”
“Barely even a myth,” Saias said. “We’ve only begun to suspect. Scarcely a comment made here and there, quickly dismissed and filed away. We made a few findings available to our colleagues on Targon but I doubt anyone has taken them seriously. It’s one of those things you mean to study when there is time for that. Even now, this is hard to fathom.”
“I’m not lying,” Khoe said.
Seth stood up and tugged her toward an empty chair. Like the others here, it was a paper-thin sheet with a graphene core, tastefully contoured to cradle a bi-ped in comfort. The others gasped in unison when she passed through it like a ghost while her hand in his remained perfectly solid. Everyone expected her to fall when she sat down on it. “Her interaction with solid objects is how, jointly, our minds decide it should be, led by her. She is real only to us.”
“The manifestation of this entity is remarkable,” Quine said. “I expect it’s somehow seated in your thalamus, Shan Sethran, feeding directly into your cortex which, of course is accessed by our khamal via your interface taps. Very elegant. Almost by design.”
“You’re suggesting some purpose to this?” Saias said.
“I’m not sure. Could be simply opportunistic. All Prime species have more or less the same central nervous system configuration. This would be a very likely way to establish communication with the host.” His gesture encompassed all of Khoe. “Shaped to elicit empathy, I suppose.”
“What does that mean,” Khoe said sharply. “I didn’t even know what Seth was until I came aboard.”
“Please, dear, we mean no insult,” Saias said. “This is all very new to us.”
“What I mean is that you could manifest as anything you like,” Quine said. “Any species, some fantastic construct resembling nothing we’ve ever seen, or perhaps just remained invisible. You could be walking upside down on the ceiling for all the difference it would make to you. In a quest for power, you could have taken on godlike proportions, depending on our individual beliefs. But you chose something appealing to the Centauri, engaging his willingness to accept your presence as a peer. I doubt he’d be as easily swayed had you appeared as a Rhuwac.”
Seth, who had only recently come to a similar conclusion, smiled grimly. “I never considered myself quite so easily manipulated but you’re correct
about the Rhuwac. She has been studying my data bank to create this projection.”
“Which seems devoid of shoes,” Caelyn interjected.
“I’m not interested in trying out new shapes,” Khoe said. She looked directly at Seth. “I’m not here for your amusement.”
“No one’s expecting you to perform tricks,” Caelyn said before Seth found some reply to that. “Your choices just seem very astute.”
“And yet,” Quine said, reaching for more warm berry juice, “she isn’t merely the sum of pure data. She’s able to reason, choose, feel and convey emotion. This may be learned from you, Shan Sethran. A reflection of your personality and another source of empathy between you.”
“If so,” Saias said. “Creating a Rhuwac or some other objectionable creature would probably not be possible.”
“That, in itself, would make a fascinating study. These entities’ ultimate appearance and personality would then depend entirely on their host and the information they are given at, well, I suppose ‘birth’ is as good a term as any. Attitudes, morals, emotional responses, all following existing neural connections.”
“But, surely, from there they would be able to shape their own,” Saias said, intrigued by the idea. “Even share them.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Khoe interrupted. “My people are in danger because of you and you call me a parasite?”
The Shantir actually reached out to pat her arm. “Forgive us, Shan Khoe. The mind wanders when faced with such a fascinating new discovery. We shall call you a visitor and think of you as such.” He sobered visibly. “I do have some concern about how your presence is affecting Sethran’s physical wellbeing.”
“How so?” Seth said.
Quine indicated Caelyn. “Shan Caelyn told us of some energy transfers taking place. I suspect that Khoe is able to manipulate electromagnetic radiation in some ways. Any such transition would take its toll on an organic host, no matter how efficient.”