by Josh Leone
“What are you saying?”
“Look, I know this guy. He served on that ship, the one I repaired the phase engine on. Well, it’s like this. After he retired, he went into business for himself. He runs a crewing agency. People need extra crew, they come to him. He could get us jobs. We save up, buy our own ship, and live our lives out on the edge as freelancers far away from data-pushers.”
“How would we even get out there? You have no credits, and I’m in debt up to my ears.”
“I know this woman; she owes me a favor or two…”
It went on like that. In his long life it seemed as though Vig had accumulated contacts everywhere, most of which held him in high regard and/or owed him a favor. His friend at the crewing agency had plenty of grunt work for them, or rather, for Seth. Vig, being the engineer he was, was always in high demand. It didn’t matter that Seth had indeed made the Exclusion Lists. Vig always made it clear to potential employers that they were a team.
Seth quickly developed his own rep among the travelers. He was a fine pilot and could handle a fight with the best of them. Time passed, their pay scale went up, and eventually they had enough to buy the Enduring Journey. From then on it was all about keeping the ship flying. Seth had never been much more than a high-holy day worshipper of the Holy Mother, but he had to admit, things had worked out. His place was out on the edge, in his own ship, with a trusted friend beside him. Life was good and their most recent job looked like an easy payday.
They took navigational readings off the buoy and plotted the next phase jump. After the gate closed behind The Enduring Journey, another ship detached itself from the side of the nav-buoy.
◊
Iyanna checked her screens and saw that the cloaked tracer drone had attached itself securely to the departing ship. It would alert her by dedicated q-net link the moment The Enduring Journey exited phase space, giving her its exact location.
She deactivated the cloaking systems that made it impossible for all but the most sophisticated scanners to detect her presence. Cloaks were highly illegal for non-Legion ships, but it was hard to arrest someone for something specifically designed to evade detection. The cloaking tech was spread throughout the Storm, integrated into dozens of standard systems. It would require dismantling the entire ship to find it.
Iyanna was still technically a citizen in good standing, and no Legion checkpoint commander would dare damage a citizen’s property on mere suspicion. The Civil Authority wouldn’t hear of it.
The Civil Authority, as the low man on the political totem pole, was always looking for a reason to stick it to the Legion, which was in a constant political pissing match with the Ministry of Records, which would be only too happy to stand with the CA if it meant a chance to put the Legion in its place. The complex and often petty interaction between the three governmental branches of the Primacy was the best insurance citizens had against violations of their rights, or at least any obvious violation.
Iyanna sat back in her command chair and waited. The hardest lesson for her to learn had been that most of her chosen line of work consisted of waiting. But she’d learned the lesson well. She put herself through a mental relaxation routine she’d learned in the PoPros, maintaining sharp awareness while letting her body rest. Another lesson had taught her that when the time for waiting ended, it usually did so abruptly, requiring quick and decisive action. Iyanna would be ready, she always was.
◊
The suite of rooms was luxurious by any standard. The furniture was made from actual Earth harvested wood instead of the more common imported off-world species. Oak dominated the décor, all hand carved by the suite’s occupant over his centuries of life. If one looked closely at each piece, one would see depictions of ancient gods and goddesses, creatures from the myths and legends of a dozen sentient species, including humanity’s own prehistory.
Every image was carved in such exquisite detail as to trick the mind into perceiving them as moving, interacting with each other in a living, flowing story. Average eyes would not be able to perceive all the detail, except through significant magnification.
Central to the main sitting room was a circular pedestal. Upon this was a fine oak chair. Around it, upon the pedestal, was a selection of tools, some with blades so fine they had to be sharpened using specialized nanites.
One entire wall of the sitting room was a large window, though it was currently set in display screen mode. The screen was dominated by the image of Jonah Haj, sleeping peacefully in his assigned suite. Jonah’s new body was nearly two meters in height, which was common for Honored Returned, and weighed close to four-hundred pounds, despite not showing an ounce of fat. The bone and muscle tissue of his new body were far denser than that of his birth body. That, and all the additional implants and enhancements, accounted for the greater mass.
If the body of an Honored Returned was built for combat, the body of the being watching Jonah had been built for another purpose entirely, as a vehicle for a brain and the consciousness within it. Callers had access to all the science that went into creating an Honored Returned and much more. The body of a Caller was deceptively strong and possessed of vast endurance, but the greatest effort had been expended in providing enhancements to cognition, memory, and other areas of neuro-psychology.
Caller Vashek was considered by many to be exceptional even among Callers. At more than seven centuries old, Vashek was not the oldest member of the Council of Callers, but he was far from the youngest. Vashek had cultivated the power of his mind using the most rigorous methods, the very latest science, and a personal will that granted him a position of incredible authority over the workings of the universe in which he lived.
A small part of his vast, multi-tasking mind perceived the faint sound of approaching footfalls outside his door. By the time the bell rang, Vashek had already cross referenced a huge catalogue of sensory input to determine not only who approached, but also various aspects of the comer’s mood.
“Enter.” Vashek’s voice was soft but clear. It was the kind of voice that could engage in a private conversation or be heard across a gathering hall without artificial amplification. That voice was just one tool in a vast repertoire Vashek had developed to perfection.
The door opened and Vashek’s Personal Assistant, Woodard Franks, entered. The P.A. was every bit as physically forgettable as always, all except for the ice blue eyes that had first caught Vashek’s attention many years ago. Left to their own devices they might have become the eyes of a wild animal. They would have seen blood, even as they had under Vashek’s guidance, but it would have been blood shed without purpose, a waste. Vashek despised waste. He hated inefficiency of any kind. Vashek’s was a life of purpose, of clear focus on a singular goal. His will was a laser that cut away all that was not useful.
Franks stood still, waiting for his master to speak first. The P.A. watched as Vashek finished his contemplation of the sleeping Returned. Though the Caller was nude, it hardly mattered since his current body was entirely without sexual characteristics. His androgynous form was also free of body hair, nipples, anything that could have helped identify him as male or female. His features were undeniably beautiful. ‘Ethereal’ was an appropriate word.
Not all Callers elected to forgo gender. Many on the Council took great pride in their femininity, considering their bodies to be living temples to the Holy Mother. Other Callers chose very masculine forms, believing that it was a man’s place to protect and serve Her will. Vashek thought them all preening fools. Gender roles were nothing but societal limitations, ways for the weak of mind to be more certain of their place in the universe. Vashek had freed himself of such things upon his first Returning.
When others used words such as ‘him’ or ‘his’ in relation to Vashek, he did not bother to correct them. He understood that lesser minds required easy labels and it would have been a waste of effort to demand otherwise.
The one vanity Vashek had was the hair on his head. It was blonde, luxuriou
s, long, and held in place in a simple braid. Vashek knew that humans, despite assumptions of social and psychological evolution, were still greatly motivated by appearance. The hair served to balance his appearance. Had he been without hair entirely he knew he might have appeared too foreign in form for many humans to accept. The long, blonde hair transformed him, in the minds of lesser people, from androgynously alien, to exotically human. Humans liked the strange, but required the familiar. Vashek’s image provided both. Yet one more carefully cultivated tool.
“I would hear your report now.”
“Thank you, my Caller.” Franks spoke with a deep reverence. “The Vodule of fourteen worlds have been released from their alien flesh. The Primacy has added more than four-hundred square light-years to its domain in total.”
Vashek nodded, accepting the information. The Caller knew his servant had more news but was withholding it to draw out the anticipation. Franks wanted nothing more than to please his master with good news. Vashek smiled to himself and allowed the P.A. to have his moment.
“My Caller, I am most pleased to inform you that the last of the Pash have agreed to terms of surrender. They have already paid first tribute and their holdings are being surveyed for resources. They have submitted completely to Primacy rule.”
“This pleases me greatly. Has this surrender allowed you to proceed?”
“Yes, my Caller. The planet you designated has been temporarily quarantined.”
Vashek bestowed a beatific smile upon Franks. One might have thought from Franks’ reaction that the Holy Mother Herself had appeared before him. Vashek dismissed Franks with a few words of gratitude for a job well done. It was all the reward the man ever required.
Left alone again, Vashek took a moment to commune with his body. He noted a few pre-cancerous cells near his left lung. They would take years to develop into something dangerous if left unchecked. Vashek willed his enhanced immune system to destroy the mutated cells and replace them with healthy ones at an accelerated rate. Vashek briefly contemplated abandoning his current body for an updated version. He’d been in his current body for almost forty years and many advances had been made since then. He decided against it. Now was not the time to be distracted by unnecessary change. Not when his goal was so close to being realized.
The Pash were the key. The winged felinoids had been a thorn in the Primacy’s side for more than six-hundred years. The initial battles against the Pash had gone well, with much of the scattered race of nomads freed from their alien flesh. But the creatures had quickly adopted guerilla tactics and had proved unexpectedly capable of inflicting damage on distant outposts, colonies, and even the occasional military target.
It was an annoyance at most, but one that might give other species ideas if not responded to with strength. As a result, the individual tribes of Pash, often called ‘prides’ due to the species’ feline appearance, were dealt with harshly wherever they were found. During the last two decades the Pash had seemed to run out of hiding places. Few outside of Franks and Vashek knew that this was due almost entirely to the vast network of contacts and spies Vashek, through his various cat’s paws, had developed over the centuries. The current state of affairs for the Pash was due to a simple confluence of events that, had any number of small things not occurred, would have come out much differently.
Many years ago an otherwise inconsequential Pash camp had been attacked by Legion forces. The Pash had been driven away too quickly for the aliens to collect all their belongings. Among the items seized was a data storage device of ancient design. The Captain of the ship that led the attack happened to be aware of a collector of such things and sold the artifact for a tidy sum. That collector was actually an agent of Vashek’s, though of course he had no knowledge of that fact due to a carefully constructed series of intermediaries that could be cut out of the equation at a moment’s notice.
The ancient device held religious material consisting of several thousand pages of illuminated manuscript. Vashek was fluent in all human languages and most alien tongues, including Pasheth. He sifted through the material and found it mostly to be the usual fantastical tripe that had plagued intelligent life through the ages. But one section, actually just a few sentences, had caught his attention.
“The Walker looked upon the assembled crowd and said, ‘I have seen the way of things. I have been one with the crystalline spear that touches the sky. I have heard the Call.’
The crowd knew the Walker spoke the truth, and that he spoke with the voice of the world.”
The words struck Vashek at his core. It hadn’t been a crisis of faith; Vashek had never had any. The mythology of the Holy Mother was just another tool, one useful in controlling the masses. Vashek did not believe in such fictions but he knew their power over lesser minds. It had always amazed Vashek that even his peers on the Council, some of whom had minds almost equal to his own, seemed to genuinely believe.
The meaning of the Pash manuscript was undeniable. A crystal spear that touched the sky? A holy being that had been one with it? The voice of the world? The Call? How could it be referring to anything else? Despite humanity’s assumptions, the Pash had, at some point in the distant past, had access to another Calling Tower. It would be unthinkable to the Primacy. It was the foundation stone upon which human civilization was built that Earth, and only Earth, had been gifted with a manifest expression of its living mind. The Calling Tower was unique in the universe, a symbol of the Primacy’s right to expand regardless of the consequence to other species.
Vashek himself ran the tests to find the age of the device and the data stored on it. He confirmed that it pre-dated the emergence of Earth’s tower by centuries. This was information that could destroy the Primacy. That it had happened to come into Vashek’s possession had to have been more than simple chance. It was assurance from the universe itself that Vashek was destined to succeed.
Vashek recalled the first time he’d known he was meant for greatness. He’d excelled in his PoPros, was accepted into Ministry training, but he wanted more. Vashek wanted power, not because he wanted to change the Primacy, not because he cared to lord that power over others. For Vashek the attainment of power in all its forms was simply proof that he was superior, that his mind was superior to all others, that his will was paramount.
In his PoPros, Vashek had quickly become top of his class, achieved the highest scores, and developed a social circle that included classmates from all walks of life, anyone that could be of use to him. Vashek was selected for advanced training in the Ministry PoPros, as he knew he would be.
The network of “friends” he’d cultivated allowed him to advance quickly through the Ministry, but still it was not enough. He attained vast personal wealth, expanded his network of contacts throughout Primacy space, and still it was not enough. Vashek eventually set his sights on the Primacy’s highest seat of power. It took him less than five years to worm his way into the confidence of an ancient Caller, to become heir to the Caller’s seat on the Council.
Vashek was made Caller after his mentor elected to give up his seat and join his consciousness permanently with those contained within the Tower. Vashek maintained the outward appearance of a faithful and humble servant of the Holy Mother Earth. His power continued to grow, as did his hunger for challenge.
Having achieved the ultimate position of power possible in the Primacy, Vashek feared he’d exhausted all challenges to his superiority. The petty bickering and political maneuvering in the Council was beneath him. It was simply too easy, and for a time Vashek knew despair. It wasn’t until the beginning of his second century of life that Vashek came to understand the nature of his ultimate goal, to transcend the need for body altogether, to become a being of pure power, pure mind, unfettered by the limits of a mortal coil - to become, in literal truth, a god. It was, Vashek believed, the only logical way forward.
Vashek spent the following centuries maintaining his position, increasing his resources, and expanding his network of co
ntacts. But all of it was only so that he could pursue his goal of godhood. Vashek sought out every method of training his mind, of amplifying his natural gifts. He’d studied the nature of consciousness transfer until he was more expert in the subject than any other.
It was no crime to explore the nature of the Calling Tower, the science behind it, so long as no damage was done to the manifest expression of the Holy Mother’s will itself. Vashek spent decades arguing in Council that humanity must take the next step in evolution, that the Tower was the path to shedding the physical body entirely. He always couched his argument in religious dogma, saying that in transcending physical existence the Callers could truly be one with the Holy Mother, could serve Her better and gain a greater understanding of Her will. In truth, Vashek had no interest in sharing ascension with anyone else, nor did he believe for a moment that the process of transcendence was anything but pure science, but he had to convince the Council he was pursuing his goal to serve the Holy Mother.
The major impediment to Vashek’s plan was that each Caller was connected to the Calling Tower as part of the Returning process. That connection remained, allowing each Caller a certain amount of access to the Tower data matrix. Usually this amounted to little more than a kind of instinct as to where the Tower was in relation to one’s current position. A directional sense akin to what birds used to find true north. This was the ‘Calling.’ It existed in all Earth-born humans to lesser degrees, but in those whose consciousness had been through the Returning, it was far more potent.
Callers could, if enough of them joined together in common cause, disconnect a single consciousness from the Tower matrix. This would make Returning, something otherwise automatic after the first time, impossible. The prevailing dogma held that all consciousness could reincarnate, but reincarnation was different from Returning in that it rendered the mind a blank slate that started life anew. The possibility of reincarnation was one of the major tenants of faith among the devoted population of the Primacy. Vashek appreciated the power of that faith as a way of controlling the billions of humans spread far and wide throughout the universe.