The sphere was divided into many levels, at least twenty, with many rooms on each level. I guessed it to be over a hundred meters tall (and wide, if it was truly a sphere), and the transparent material of which it was made was so clear I could see through to the other side without distortion or darkening. And yet I could see the divisions that made floors and ceilings and rooms.
I stepped toward the sphere, seeing as I did visitors floating up from directly beneath it, entering via the bottom. Something was tickling in the back of my head, and my growing sense of unreality returned. I had an unaccountable feeling that soon approached a level of moral certainty: I had been here before. More than that, I had been in that sphere, and not just once. In fact, I realized with something like a gasp, I worked there. Which made no sense at all.
While I was puzzling out how those facts, so obviously false but feeling so completely correct, an electric pulse shocked through my body. It was all I could do to remain still and innocuous. For, inside, I saw Livia.
She was in a small room on the near side of the sphere, looking at some images on a wall, talking to someone I could not see. Perhaps using a communication device of some sort, I guessed.
I stood and watched her for minutes, occupied in some activity or labor that I knew nothing of. Then a doorway appeared in her interior glass wall, and a god (man?) walked into her room, and I experienced yet another and even greater shock. He stepped to Livia, touched her arm, bent his head close to hers, and kissed her.
I stumbled away from the floating building, from the green lawn. Hurried through the wide avenue I entered. I wanted out — out of this city, out of this everything. For I recognized the god/man who had just kissed Livia. It was Hermes.
An explosion flared through my head and I turned away and saw no more.
The first thing to come back was sensation. I was warm and encompassed in a womb-like, soft, and supporting bed.
Then sound — the soft whirring of fans and the gentle ticking of cooling metal, the noise of my own breathing, and, below it all, even my heartbeat.
Finally vision returned and I saw gentle oscillating lights in the darkness. I was in a pod, coming out of varisleep. I was alive. I was home. It had been a dream.
I got out of the pod and dressed for the day like I was still in a dream. There was an air of unreality surrounding everything, as if everything I saw had changed, or as if I myself had changed. Part of it was being back in the hall after such a unaccustomed long absence. Part of it was wondering about Jaca and his fate: was he dead for good? Was his sacrifice meaningful? Did it matter? But most of it was lingering remnants of the dream I had just dreamt.
s.Leep was dreamless, generally. The regenerative sleep in the varipod repaired most wounds, even fatal ones, strengthened muscle and bone, and restored health in all particulars. It did not induce REM sleep, or dreaming, or travel to other places or dimensions of reality. And I had never come out so troubled.
The cumulative blows of possible explanations struck: was I crazy? was that real? were, perhaps the “gods” merely human, composed of flesh and blood, just like all of us in the hall? Just like me? Perhaps the hall and Valhalla itself were not so distant as they appeared. Perhaps I had known the city in another life. Perhaps Livia was not who she seemed to be. And, if so, maybe, neither was I. Or perhaps it was all just a dream, a strange glitch in s.Leep that I had never experience before.
Full of questions with no answers, I met the others in the hall. Jaca was not among them. Being so few in such a large space added to my malaise, which seemed to be shared by others. The food appeared and we dug in with good appetites but little cheer. Fortunately the general melancholy masked my deeper but still poorly defined internal conflict: the realization that perhaps my reality was not what it appeared to be. Not what I had always unquestioningly taken it to be. And that, by inexorable extension, I was not who I thought I was.
Banishing those thoughts for the moment, I looked up at the group and forced myself to smile.
“We are back,” I said. “It seems so long ago that we were here. And yet, it was just a few short days.” My smile felt brittle on my lips, but it did feel good to be together, in the only home we knew.
“Back indeed,” said Kin. “Back to good food and good beds! No more kumis and camels and raunchy tents!” We smiled, even grinned, and Kin stretched luxuriously as he spoke.
Livia rose, and I remembered her toast from, it seemed, an age ago. Once again she had a cup in her hand, and everyone around the table scrambled to fill up.
“We lost one of our number on this past mission.”
She paused, and we all stood. Then she raised the cup.
“To Jaca.”
We all drank, silent, remembering. And I wondered as we did … was Jaca truly dead, or was he also in storage somehow, somewhere, waiting, sleeping, able to come back. Looking around, I could see all of us considering that question. And — the next obvious question: if we died on a mission, would we be rescued, saved, stored? Would we ever be reborn?
But Livia was speaking again.
“We will remember. As long as there is memory, there is hope.”
She raised the cup again, and this time drained it. Then she looked into my eyes. I met her gaze, I knew she sensed the turmoil in my soul. Her eyes asked questions, but I had no answers for her or the questions in my head. I dropped my eyes to the table and sat. We all sat.
Then I looked up and there were tears in Livia’s eyes, and I did not know if they were for Jaca or for me. Before I could explore either the reason for the tears or the my feelings about them, steam started to boil in the hall, and a deep sonorous rumbling shook our table. Hermes was coming.
Hermes manifested like no other time we had ever seen him. He was happy, almost jolly, even slightly giddy.
“We done, my warriors, well done. In fact, very well done indeed.” He paused, smiled.
“You have succeeded in your task. The Chinese have been defeated; many were captured by the Arabs, and paper experts are on their way to the caliphate’s capital. I am pleased.”
He smiled again, almost grinning this time, and looked very satisfied with himself.
“All perfectly according to plan.”
I was reluctant to interrupt this happiness, but I wanted to know about Jaca. And I was shocked that Hermes was so unaware of our mood, so happy while we were so somber. We were mourning a lost comrade; he was dancing a jig. I had to say something.
“Except for Jaca.”
The words hung out in the stillness of the hall like a single crow’s ugly voice in the stillness of a glorious morning sunrise. I swallowed — I had not meant to be so abrupt. Would Hermes think it impertinent? He paused, not seeming to know how to respond, and locked his eyes on me.
Livia filled in the silence before he could roar a reply.
“We’re just concerned about our comrade, Lord Hermes,” she said respectfully, humbly. “Will Jaca be all right? Can you restore him to us?”
It was the right interjection, with exactly the correct degree of deference. And it was from the right person. Hermes turned his gaze to Livia, and smiled again. He was tender with her.
“Jaca will rise again, if I will it. He is not needed now — let him sleep. But set your hearts at ease: Jaca is fine, and I can wake him if ever he is needed.”
“Now take some time. Rest. Relax. Eat. Training starts again in a few days, and then I will have another mission for you.”
Then he turned stern.
“And trust me. All will be well, for all of you, when your missions are complete.”
This last was said with his eyes focused on me. Then, with a last glance around the table, Hermes left. But his warning and reassurance fell flat. For perhaps the first time, I was not sure that we could trust him. I was not sure if I believed him about Jaca. The problem was that I had no choice but to obey him.
The rest of that day we spent eating, speaking, laughing, decompressing from a long, hard task
. There was no physical healing or restoring to do; the varipods ensured that. But mentally, psychologically, we needed to refocus and re-center.
Near the end of the day I left the group and wandered the rooms and hallways of our base, our home, seeing room after room of empty s.Leep chambers and missing warriors. I needed some time alone: some time to think, some time to process. There was a lot of room for ten people — nine, I reminded myself — in a base built for many hundreds, and I intended to find some and think through a few things.
What was really going on? Who was I? Or, perhaps more to the point, what was I? Who were these gods, and what was their city? Were they really gods, or … And why was Livia in that city, in that building? And why did I have such a strong sense of having been there, lived there, worked there?
I achieved no answers, and found no results to all my questioning but a growing pain in my head.
“Geno?”
I heard Livia’s voice, gentle, wondering, and realized I was leaning against a wall in a corridor far from the hall, pressing my forehead to the slick stone, with my hands on my face. Not exactly the recommended fearless warrior posture.
“Are you all right?”
There was a short answer to that question, and a truthful one. I selected short.
“I’m fine.”
She didn’t accept that, didn’t leave.
“G, what’s going on?” She paused, continued, “I could tell something was not right during the meal, and when we remembered Jaca together.”
She paused again. Reached out her hand. Touched me gently, on the shoulder. Warmth spread through my body from her fingers, and a tingling sensation danced down to my hands.
“I want to help. What can I do?”
What could I say? Tell me who you really are didn’t seem to fit, nor did I know where you live. Besides, I trusted Livia — had trusted her with my life — and she had never given me reason to mistrust before. And she was perhaps my best hope of finding answers to the questions that plagued me. I had to try.
“Tell me about the city of the gods, Livia,” I breathed heavily. “Tell me about the wide avenues, and the vine-buildings, and the glass tower that floats in the air. Tell me.”
The look of astonishment on her face was profound. Confusion too. I plowed on, hardly knowing what I was saying.
“Tell me about your room there, and your home in the city. Tell me about the work you do in the glass tower. And tell me about Hermes, and you, and what you do. Together.”
Now she was shaking her head, mouth gaped in astonishment, eyes wide in incomprehension and bewilderment.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, G. I don’t know what you mean …” her voice trailed off.
Mine hardened, and I turned abruptly, and knocked her hand off my shoulder.
“I saw you there, Livia. In the city. I saw you in the glass tower, in a room. And I saw you with Lord Hermes.” Vitriol entered my voice. “You seemed to know each other very well.”
The questions I had been agonizing over were blaring in my brain. My heart was racing and my breath was loud. I grabbed her by the shoulders — tight — and roughly turned her to face me. She stiffened, tensed, ready.
“Livia? Who are you, Livia?”
She looked in my eyes, still wearing the look of someone who has no idea what is going on. All of a sudden she slumped, loosened, and collapsed against me. Tears were running down her cheeks now. Raising her face, she looked up. Grasping my face tightly with both hands, her face almost touching mine, she fixed me directly with her eyes.
“Geno, Geno, Geno, I do not know what you are talking about,” she said in an intense whisper. “I do not know the city of the gods. I have never been there, and I have never seen a glass tower that floats.”
“I am Livia, who you know. Whom you have known for hundreds of missions. I am Livia, and I do not know Lord Hermes any better than you.”
She finished, then, almost collapsing, sat down on the floor of the corridor, back to the wall. I could not sustain my anger. I could not mistrust Livia. I did not understand, but I did trust. I sank down beside her, put my arm gently on her shoulders and leaning in, touched my forehead to hers.
Hoarsely, I whispered, “I believe you. I believe you.” Then I gathered my courage. “But I need to tell you what I’ve seen. What I know, or what I think I know.”
So I told her about being with Hermes on the path, and then seeing the city. About walking into the city, and seeing the gods, or people. Seeing the tower of glass, floating in the sky. And seeing her — with Hermes. Livia listened, saying not a word as I spoke.
“I don’t know what to think,” she said. “I have never seen this city, or been taken to a field by Hermes, or been inside a glass tower in the sky. But … there is something …”
“What, Livia? What something?”
“When you speak, it’s like a small piece from the far past that has been lost. Like a memory of a memory. Which seems impossible — haven’t we always been here?”
She hung her head.
“I just don’t know, G. I just don’t know what to believe, or think, or know.”
She lay a hand on mine. “Give me some time, OK?”
I nodded, dumbly, and she got up and walked down the corridor, turning at the end. I sat on the hard floor for a long time, thinking.
The next morning I woke early. Most of the others would have aching heads and blurry vision when they did actually manage to pull themselves out of their bunks. Or pods. Or floors, depending on where they happened to pass out last night.
But before I had properly attacked a heaping plate, the bell that signaled Hermes’ imminent arrive sounded. A little shocked given that he had promised some R&R, I sat up and awaited the stragglers. Finally, after they dragged themselves into the hall, Hermes began to manifest. Without explanation or apology he jumped right in.
“You will have a new mission three days from today, in a high-tech milieu. Since you’ve been on a low-tech mission for a week, and haven’t done HT training for a month, you need some prep time. Training starts today. Be ready in 30 minutes.”
Message delivered, Hermes disappeared with no further ceremony. No ceremony at all, actually.
After that rapid-fire delivery, there were more than a few shocked looks on my team’s faces.
“What happened to a few days downtime?” muttered Drago.
“Down the drain with the rest of last night’s supper,” I said, as if I had known all along that there would be no break. The first requirement of command is to appear to be in command.
“Do whatever you need to do to wake up, but don’t eat. Zero G is 30 minutes away and I don’t want to be wearing your breakfast. Move, move, move!”
Of course, I had no idea if we’d be plunged into space battle sims, but it wouldn’t shock me. And the last thing this hung-over crew needed was any G force other than one on a recently full stomach.
The next three days were a blur of suit and exoskeleton work, particle beam weapons check-out, and a variety of null-gee re-acclimatization exercises. We had all fought in space before, done missions there together, but it had been some time since we had done focused training on systems, tech, strategy, and coms. Everything in space was both more deliberate and more immediate: days, weeks, even months of tedious travel interspersed by nanoseconds of gone-in-a-flash computer-assisted battle. It was something you forgot at lower levels of battle tech, where everything was guts and glory: your enemy was right in front of you, and it was kill or be killed in the simplest, most animalistic sense imaginable. Getting the rhythm and the feel back took time.
Four days later we were in space. Realspace. And I had not yet talked to Livia again.
Polar Solar
And we all shine on … like the moon and the stars and the sun.
- John Lennon
Hell was our destination. Or heaven — the difference was perhaps academic.
The universe had been slashed into two realitie
s. Before, an endless plane of pure light and heat and energy. Behind, deep velvet utter black, an endless featureless carpet of nothing. Any faraway stars and planets were invisible, lost in the glare, taken only on faith. We were quite literally travelling from dark to light.
A few days ago, the sun had filled our field of vision. Within a day or two, it was our vision. For weeks we had watched it grow from a bright pinpoint of light to a star, then to a sun, and then to an angry roiling massive disc. As we came closer and closer it became half our universe: a wall of light and heat that extended up and down and left and right as far as we could see. It was not circular. It was not round. It was a flat endless plain of light and heat and furious boiling.
I opted for hell.
Vast prominences and solar flares, as yet untamed by the solar power station they named Sunflower, reached out to grasp us. The million-degree temperatures of the sun’s outer atmosphere attempted to render us with casual violence into our component subatomic particles and fling us into an equally uncaring universe. The light that flooded up in uncountable quadrillions of photons threatened to push our craft away, and the unified gravitic forces of a sun-load of tightly packed ions attempted to suck us down into its depths to merge our minuscule matter with its massive self.
We had approached slowly from the solar south pole, ninety degrees to the angle of the ecliptic — the narrow band in which the planets and 99.9% of the solar system’s non-Sun mass resides. It was a high-energy approach, but the Sunflower was at the north pole, and we were using the bulk of the star to mask our arrival. While feverishly hoping that it was working, mostly worrying it probably wasn’t, and partly questioning the entire extreme bother.
No Other Gods Page 11