She chuckled at the notion that Mesme, too, had resigned itself to that reality.
The Directorate would never allow a sentient life form to be privy to the myriad of secrets the Reor carry across the universe. It discovered the Reor’s home planet, studied the substance long enough to learn its computational and informational value, and harvested it until it was depleted. Then it grew more Reor, and more, and more, never understanding the nature of the material it produces and utilizes every day.
Alex dropped to her knees and began running a hand over the surface with newfound respect. “Why didn’t the Reor…I don’t know, protect itself? Resist in some way?”
The Reor intelligence is perhaps the most alien, the most unfathomable we have ever encountered. It does not perceive the individual actors in the universe the way you or even I do. By and large, it is content to experience stimulus in the form of the coursing of information through its pathways.
“Were the Ruda your attempt to recreate this type of life form, or something akin to it?”
I will not deny we took inspiration from the Reor when setting the conditions for life in the Ruda Enisle. We hoped to breed a synthetic species which functioned closer to our own existence, so we could understand one another. And in this respect, we succeeded.
“But?”
But the Ruda thus far lack the pandimensional characteristics the Reor display. They are sentient inorganic life, which is a rare enough occurrence, but they are not….
“Extraordinary.”
Mesme didn’t respond, but it didn’t really need to. Alex could sense some indefinable complexity about this life form that far exceeded the rigid, passionless dialectics of the Ruda. “Why isn’t this collection of slabs located in a portal space? You’re hiding it, yes, but this can’t be as safe as the Mosaic.”
We considered and deliberated on it, though we could not ask the Reor its wishes. But the Reor are intricately connected to Amaranthe in ways that prove difficult to explain. As well, in the Mosaic they would have no stimuli and thus no meaningful existence.
“And these pieces? They’re receiving stimuli?”
They store copies of some of our data for us.
“So you protect a small…” no word choice felt sufficiently accurate “…sample of Reor, since should the Directorate ever learn the truth, it will try to destroy every slab in existence.”
Yes.
Caleb chuckled. “There’s an enisle with Reor in it, isn’t there?”
Of course.
She shot a glare in Mesme’s general direction, but Caleb took several steps toward the fringes of its presence. “If you could find a way to communicate meaningfully with the Reor, they could be a powerful ally.”
A powerful weapon, you mean.
“All allies are potential weapons, but not all weapons are allies. I meant ally.”
Then talk to it. Either of you—you each possess unique capabilities which make this a conceivable possibility.
Alex stared suspiciously at Mesme. “If it speaks at all—if it has thoughts—they’re expressed in an extradimensional quantum manner. That’s one of your specialties. Why can’t you talk to it?”
A reasonable question for which I have no acceptable answer. We study its signals and find only the data it holds. You are here. Make the effort.
Caleb shook his head. “I can’t talk to the diati yet. I doubt I can talk to a pandimensional mineral.”
Not pandimensional—merely extradimensional.
The faceplate did nothing to obscure the acerbic smirk Caleb directed at Mesme.
Alex, however, was already settling more fully to the surface and crossing her legs. Let’s give this a shot, Valkyrie.
How do you propose we proceed?
No idea.
She placed her palm flat on the material and activated the cybernetic pathways she would use if she were interacting with a screen or control panel. Her gloves were designed to conduct the signals received, albeit more weakly, so it might work.
The hum grew in strength, and she sensed a pressure on her palm as the mineral began shifting beneath it. She gasped but didn’t move, allowing her hand to be lifted as the surface raised itself.
Three tiers formed, creating a pyramid of sorts half a meter in height, before the process stopped. She waited, but nothing else happened. “I wish I could touch it with my bare hands. But there’s no atmosphere here, so even if my suit sealed at the wrist, my hand would freeze in seconds.”
“Wait—I think I can do something about this.” Caleb knelt beside her. He stretched a hand out over hers and began manipulating his fingers in a purposeful pattern until the space around her hand and the new pillar glowed in a thick cluster crimson lights. His brow knotted in concentration. “Okay. I think you can take your glove off now—but keep your hand inside the halo.”
She carefully unlatched the glove and slid it off. The air was cool, but not cold. It felt…normal. “Damn.”
Caleb huffed a breath but kept his attention on the halo. “You’re telling me.”
She put her palm back atop the pillar—and almost yanked it away, the vibration oscillated so forcefully against her skin. A second later the mineral began to soften, becoming pliable. Her fingertips sank into it, only a centimeter or so. The filaments in the material made contact with the conduit fibers in her fingertips, and the jolt made her gasp.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded. Valkyrie?
It is speaking to us, I know it. But I cannot decipher the language. Not yet.
It’s fine. Listen and record.
The sequence lasted almost twenty seconds before the connections broke and the mineral hardened back into its original shape. She sighed in disappointment and reattached her glove.
She was about to stand when the top of the pillar was pushed upward by a new layer underneath it, then detached from the pillar as if it had been sliced off with a knife. She picked it up and studied it; it resembled the Reor slab she’d held before, including identical proportions.
She turned to Caleb, and Mesme lurking behind him. “We couldn’t decipher what it was saying, if it was saying anything at all. But there was activity of some kind. We’ll study it.” She held up the piece. “And now I have one to play with.”
Her gaze ran across the surface of the slab they stood on to the sea of Reor and their little star beyond. The filaments buried in the mineral pulsed through the color spectrum in time with the streams of energy flowing between them, vibrant and alive.
As she fixated on the streams they seemed to shift until they pulsed toward her, no matter which direction she faced. Enthralled, she began walking toward one of the vertical streams. She was vaguely cognizant of Caleb and Mesme trailing her, but they didn’t question her purpose.
In the silence she listened to the energy flowing below her and, increasingly, ahead of her. She did not understand the words, but it sang to her nonetheless.
She neared the outer edge of the energy beam—it was quite wide up close, at least twenty meters in diameter—and started to reach up. Her hand paused mid-air.
Caleb appeared at her side, gave her a small smile and conjured a new sphere of diati to surround her hand. “I’d tell you to be careful, but we wouldn’t be here if you’d ever taken that advice. No reason to start now, right?”
She laughed faintly and removed her glove once again, extending her hand until her fingertips touched the beam—
—a yellow star, a frozen planet—
—an eternal city, a room pitched in blackness—
—a sphere bathed in light, spinning away from void to—
“Alex, talk to me.”
She blinked and looked up at Caleb, surprised to find herself ass-first on the slab and him crouched in front of her. Behind him the stream continued to pulse in surging power.
I forced you to pull away before your cybernetics overloaded, followed soon thereafter by me.
Good call.
“I’m fine.�
�� She took Caleb’s hand and let him help her up to standing. “I saw…places. Planets, stations….” She shook her head. “It was probably just fragments of the data stored here.”
“That’s enough cosmic play for one day.” Caleb glanced at Mesme. “Time to go.”
She didn’t argue, and she allowed him to lead the way back to the Siyane, for her mind swam amidst the lingering memory of the images, buttressed by the refrain humming beneath her feet.
Did the Anadens—and everyone here in Amaranthe—not comprehend the power of these objects they used so carelessly? Did they not notice the life exploding from within them?
Awed, overwhelmed and humbled, she decided she would understand the Reor. What they were, what they said, what they sang.
AURORA
13
ROMANE
IDCC COLONY
* * *
THE NIGHT SKY BLAZED in the fire of dancing, streaming light, wowing a crowd that should have been jaded beyond the ability to impress. Not tonight, though.
Devon Reynolds’ chest nearly burst with joy as the gleaming platform sent Emily spinning upward, the visuals her hands created chasing after her high into the air.
The projections of the other performers on Earth and Seneca were so detailed anyone who didn’t know better was liable to insist they were all here on the stage on Romane. The scene would be the same on the other planets hosting the galaxy-wide celebration commemorating the first anniversary of the end of—and victory in—the Metigen War.
The show provided an impressive enough spectacle to elicit approving murmurs from Annie in his head, but Devon soon zoomed his vision in close to watch Emily alone. Her lips were pursed in earnest concentration, but her eyes shone with a glee that eclipsed their Artificial luster. Her blond hair was woven through with strands of emerald and gold photal beads to match her satin dress, which matched her glyphs. The result transformed her into a nymph, a mystical creature too fantastical to exist here among the mere flesh-and-blood mortals.
She richly deserved to be on—or above—the stage, to be a part of this performance, and he could not be more proud of her.
He sat perched on one of the balcony railings, two-thirds of the way back in the bowl-shaped amphitheater. He had a spot reserved on the front row as an ‘honored guest,’ as well as one at the governor’s cocktail party currently underway in the grandstand box above. But this wasn’t about him; it was about Emily, and he was enjoying being anonymous, where he didn’t face pressure from bigwigs to disguise his giddy enthusiasm.
The sky grew yet brighter and more colorful until it was saturated with light and plasma and strobes. The music swelled to match the intensity until both reached such levels of excess he wondered if the Anadens might notice the pageantry way over through two portals and into Amaranthe.
It was all quite over-the-top, but he guessed such celebrations were intended to be. A collective gathering of millions of voices to rise up and shout into the void: us silly humans are alive, and we are unbowed. We are triumphant.
Which they were, for tonight at least. And for tonight, it was enough.
As soon as Devon reached the backstage area, Emily burst out of the throng of performers to rush into his arms, panting, sweaty and exuberant. He laughed and kissed her on the forehead. “You were magnificent, babe.”
“Was I? It all happened so fast, and the overlay got so crazed I could only concentrate on the next motion.”
“Magnificent.”
“Okay, good.” She grinned sloppily. “We’ve been invited to a wrap party at the Carina Center, but I can’t go like this—I’m a wreck! Can we swing by the apartment so I can shower and change?”
“I think you look gorgeous sweaty, but sure, so long as you don’t take the beads out of your hair. I love them. Are you clear to leave now?”
She nodded, and he took her hand and began winding through the crowd toward the exit.
His apartment lay a few blocks away, and he spent the walk listening to Emily chatter on excitedly, basking in the afterglow of the performance. It was awesome.
He felt as if he’d sprinted through Hell and somehow come out the other side at the secret entrance to Heaven. He’d changed in the time they’d been apart, far more than in physical appearance. How could he have not? So had she.
They were still stumbling through what that meant for them, but it was beginning to feel like it was going to work out. She’d come here, to Romane, hadn’t she? ‘For a few weeks, as a trial run,’ she’d said.
He didn’t want to get overconfident, but he thought the trial was running pretty damn well.
The pedestrian traffic finally began to thin as they turned a corner and walked the last block to the apartment building—which was a good thing, because if the crowd hadn’t faded, he never would have sensed the three thugs advancing. As it was, Annie identified their movements as threatening only thirty-eight microseconds before they came within reach.
Hostile aggressors approaching 88° to 123° 4.1 meters—
“Run!” He flung Emily forward down the sidewalk and spun around to block a man’s arm as it arced toward Devon, a small injector in its grasp. The night was warm, and his hand found bare skin below the man’s shirtsleeve.
The attacker convulsed as Devon shoved him to the ground the same instant a second attacker came at him from the side. He threw his shoulder into the man and knocked him into the nearby building façade, brought a hand up to the man’s neck and throttled it.
Nothing happened. The man sneered.
Shit. Not only was the attacker mélanged at a minimum, his cybernetics were ready for the jolt and had dispersed it.
Annie, I need—
The man’s fist landed beneath Devon’s chin, sending his head snapping backward, his body following. He stumbled for two steps—but it gave him the space to grab the blade hilt attached to his waist. Since Abigail’s murder he’d begun carrying one despite his unarmed capabilities, as he’d adopted the opinion one could never have too many weapons.
He coaxed the man into lunging forward for him by acting dazed and unsteady. When the man reached him, he swept his arm up, slammed the hilt against the attacker’s neck and activated it. The man gaped in surprise as his momentum carried them both to the ground.
Suddenly there was blood everywhere, and the man didn’t fight when Devon heaved him to the side and climbed to his feet.
There had been a third assailant. Annie, where?
No contacts in the vicinity.
He scanned the area nonetheless, but saw no one except Emily standing on the sidewalk. She had one hand on her shoulder, grabbing clumsily for the injector sticking out of the skin above her collarbone.
“Devon…something’s wrong. I can’t….”
He sprinted down the sidewalk toward her in growing horror. The glyphs running along her arms darkened from emerald to an ugly, mottled brown, as if ink had been injected into them, and her knees buckled.
He caught her just before she hit the ground. Her head lolled to the side in his arms, eyes closed.
“Emily? Emily?”
He looked up in mounting panic. In the distance pedestrians strolled across the next intersection. “Somebody help!”
Annie—
Help is on the way, Devon. It will be all right.
The view through the tall windows of the grandstand box suite high above the amphitheater sparkled and shone in the wake of the pageantry on display tonight, but Malcolm’s attention hardly strayed from the view inside.
Mia Requelme wore a black silk shift of a dress, sleeveless and draped high in the front but plunging low to her waist in the back. Her sleek hair fell almost as low, but the skin it revealed when she moved her head in one direction or another was enough to send shivers up his spine.
This was the phase of a relationship, near the beginning but after the fumbling awkwardness had passed, where everything was new, where every touch was electric and every meeting anticipated. Knowing it was a p
hase didn’t lessen his enjoyment of it.
And many meetings to anticipate there were. Their much-heralded and oft-postponed lunch date had quickly turned into dinner then into a weekend, and now he spent so much time here he was all but commuting from Romane to the Presidio.
He tried hard to ensure the extra travel didn’t interfere with his AEGIS responsibilities, working during the transport flights and laboring to not allow his thoughts to drift to her while he was working.
Results had varied.
The businessman whose small talk had gone on a bit long finally excused himself to refill his drink, and Mia pivoted to flash Malcolm a brief, discreet look of annoyance. “He talks too much in Chamber meetings, too.” Her hand alighted on his elbow. “Let’s take the opportunity to grab some finger food and retreat to a corner for a few minutes’ peace.”
He did not need to be convinced. His moderately elevated military rank, the social strata his ex-wife resided in and other accidents of fate meant he’d been attending cocktail parties, banquets and the odd gala for a number of years now, but he’d never enjoyed them. He didn’t mind the uncomfortable dress uniform—he remained proud to wear it—but rather all the false niceties bandied about at the functions. No one actually engaged in conversations; they simply over-enunciated meaningless words into the air past one another.
He was here tonight because he’d been invited by Governor Ledesme on account of his role in defending Romane from the Metigen attack, given the success of the defense was one of the events they were celebrating.
But mostly he was here for Mia. To support her, to be with her, to hope to steal her away from the party soon.
On reaching a vacant high table against the far wall without being waylaid, they offloaded their plates to the crystal surface and relaxed as much as the environment allowed.
She nibbled on a baby carrot. “How is work going?”
“As if you don’t know.”
“I meant the details of your work, specifically. Besides, I work for the IDCC, not AEGIS.”
He laughed quietly. “Are you sure?”
Relativity: Aurora Resonant Book One (Aurora Rhapsody 7) Page 9