Withûr We

by Matthew Bruce Alexander

  He was a tall man and slender, with dark hair and a thin mustache like a quick trace of a pencil. His chest was covered in metals and insignia of rank and he was flanked by two armed Civil Guardsman whose rifles were leveled at him.

  “Alistair Ashley 3nn,” said the Colonel with the tone of one who has finally gotten his wish.

  Alistair proudly drew himself up to his full height, his cramped back cracking as he straightened it. He suppressed a wince as his shoulders, forced into an unnatural position for so long, protested.

  “There is no one here of that name. But you must be deathly afraid of him to spare a dreadbot for escort duty.”

  The Colonel smiled, his lips as thin as his mustache. “It does not shame me to recognize your physical prowess, Alistair. We know who you are, we know what we trained you to do, and we have no intention of ever letting you slip back into the rebellion. That is why you are going to be executed tomorrow morning.”

  The Colonel was not telling Alistair anything he did not already know, but hearing the words was different from thinking them. He felt his knees tremble and he fought to keep his composure. The Colonel maliciously smiled.

  “You’ll be questioned first, of course, and depending on how disagreeable you are we may delay the execution to mid afternoon. It’s really up to you, although we both know you won’t last any longer than that. But all in due time. Right now, there is something we want to show you.”

  At that, the Colonel moved past Alistair, confident and unconcerned. Alistair followed, unnerved by the dreadbot, its movements as fluid and graceful as mercury, its footsteps, despite its great weight, almost soundless. The two Civil Guard followed a few paces behind. He could feel a tingle on the two spots on his back where he imagined their rifles were aimed.

  Upon reaching the end of the walkway, they descended some stairs, their boots clanking on the metal flooring. He followed the Colonel out prison block and down a brightly lit white hallway before entering a small chamber on the other side of a set of double doors. It was dimly lit and boasted a large window taking up nearly the entire wall on the left side. On the other side of the window was a tiled room with two morgue carts. A figure in white, his face partially concealed by a white surgical mask, stood unmoving with his hands folded in front. On each morgue cart was a white sheet covering a cadaver, the feet of both protruding from the bottom of their sheets.

  Alistair was seized by a dreadful premonition and he froze in place. The Colonel gestured to the man in white who proceeded to draw back the sheets. Alistair stared in agony at his parents.

  Forgetting all resolve to be proudly defiant until the end, Alistair, like a deflating balloon, sank to his knees with an inchoate cry. The naked bodies of the two who raised and loved him were a hideous sight. Bruises of a sickly blue and purple hue were everywhere. Their faces had been abused, his mother’s left hand mangled, and several bullet holes in each chest testified to what finally, mercifully, ended their torture.

  His eyes fixed on the almost imperceptible scar at his father’s hip where Gregory performed the surgery. It was better than looking at the wreck their bodies had been made into. It was better than seeing the torn and broken digits of the hands that had caressed him as a child, had soothed him to sleep after a nightmare. It was better than seeing teeth protruding through torn lips that had kissed him.

  He shook. His chest heaved and his fingernails dug into his palms. With a bellowing roar he came to his feet, but the dreadbot knocked him back against the wall with a shove to the chest. He kicked out with his legs to regain his feet but the dreadbot was standing over him and with another shove it knocked him into the floor. As the air left his lungs, he kicked with his right foot, but the robot caught the leg and threw it back to the floor. Almost before he felt the shock of impact, he was lifted up by his throat. Faster than any snake, the dreadbot drew back its other hand and struck a crippling punch to his face, cracking his nose and making him see stars. It let go and the captive fell to the floor and lay groaning.

  “I take it you knew them?” said the Colonel.

  When Alistair’s senses returned he slowly came to a sitting position, his shoulders throbbing as his arms remained tightly bound. He blew at the trail of blood streaming from his nose to his mouth and a few drops landed on the dreadbot’s legs.

  “You can’t take my hate,” he hissed, his voice as unsteady and uneven as his breathing. “My hate is mine and you won’t take it from me.” More drops of blood spattered the dreadbot.

  Around a deep, throaty laugh, the Colonel said, “You can have your hate. We have what we wanted. Now just imagine what will happen when every rebel is faced with the same possibility. You blow up our trains, we’ll slaughter your families. I just wanted you to know before we kill you there is no question of the rebellion succeeding. I want you to die knowing you failed.”

  He left the room then but the dreadbot and the Guardsmen stayed. At a gesture from one of the Guardsmen, the dreadbot, grabbing Alistair by an aching shoulder, hauled him up and marched him back to his cell.

  ***

  The room in which Katherine and her colleagues set up the equipment was too small to comfortably accommodate everything. The equipment itself was not ideal, having been assembled piecemeal with parts adapted for new purposes, but the experiment was finally ready.

  “This transmitter is not going to hold for long,” said one of her fellows as he, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, attempted to connect a part in the innards of one of the lasers.

  “We’re lucky Dick scavenged this one,” commented another as she rolled a pencil back and forth across her desk.

  “What happened to the first one we got?” asked the project head, an elderly and bald gentlemen named Lenny.

  “War effort,” said Katherine.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “It was taken for the war effort,” she said in a louder voice for his ancient ears.

  “So was the mechanic who used to do the assembly,” added the first scientist, his upper half inside the open belly of the machine. He withdrew from the apparatus and closed its sliding door, locking it in place with a fork through the handle. “It’ll be a miracle if we actually manage this.”

  “Are we ready?” asked Lenny by way of a gentle order, grabbing his cane and hobbling over to his station. The converted mechanic rolled down his sleeves and they all took up their positions around a small glass sphere suspended above a platform. Inside the sphere was about a liter of water and pointed at it were all manner of machines and devices.

  “Commencing,” said the woman next to Katherine. The lights dimmed and the automatic doors closed as she typed on her keypad.

  “Initiation Sequence,” confirmed Katherine as she slipped a ring on her right hand. This hand she thrust into a 3D display to manipulate the virtual controls.

  “All systems normal,” said the provisional mechanic, and then added, “If you can believe it.”

  One of the lasers lowered, looking like some strange bird going after prey, until it nearly touched the sphere. A laser on the other side, meant to be matching but due to its makeshift production almost a parody of the first, lowered to the opposite position.

  “Are we ready to proceed?” asked Lenny. After a few moments of running over check lists, there was a general murmur of assent.

  They didn’t have to wait long, and the effect wasn’t gradual. One moment there was a liter of water in the sphere, and the next there was a gaseous mix. By stirring the Essentials, they interfered with the ‘condensation zones’ Burkhard Heim predicted formed the basis for all matter. A jubilant cheer went up from the half dozen scientists and a couple jumped up and down. A pair were shaking hands and slapping each other’s shoulders, while Lenny and the mechanic/scientist were staring at the readouts. There was a small commotion and Katherine’s attention was turned to the readout display. She and the other scientists gathered behind the mechanic as he studied it.

  “There’s a… disturbanc
e in the Overlay,” he said, not worried but puzzled.

  “What sort of disturbance?” asked Katherine.

  “Unknown for the moment…”

  The group held still for a few minutes, but there was little new information forthcoming. Eventually, the anticipation of discovery ebbed and some drifted away to complete the shut down phase while Lenny and the project mechanic continued to investigate the disturbance. It was nearly a half hour later when Katherine, her duties completed, sat down at her own station to study it herself. As she familiarized herself with the nature of the effect, it began to make sense.

  “It’s behaving like a wave,” she said loudly enough to be heard at the next station.

  “That was our thought too,” replied the mechanic.

  “It’s… I think… Lenny,” she called, her voice breathless yet uncertain.

  “Yes?”

  “The frequency is modulating.” She let the implication hang in the air. Moments later all the project scientists were gathered around her station.

  “Are you saying… an Overlay radio?”

  “I say we try to track the source,” said Katherine.

  All eyes turned to Lenny.

  “That would break protocol for the experiment. We take the sensors off and we miss vital data from the sphere.”

  “We don’t move the sensors then we don’t find out where this is coming from. Lenny, this looks… like a deliberate signal.”

  “How could it be a signal? No one’s ever manipulated the Overlay before.”

  Katherine shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not saying it is, it just… if I were trying to send a signal through the Overlay, it would have these qualities I’m seeing.”

  Lenny at last gave his order: “Use the sensors. Track it.”

  The mechanic jumped back to his station, and typed furiously. A few minutes later, while the rest ignored their tasks and sat on the edge of their chairs, he said, “It’s not local.”

  “Is it coming from another system?”

  “Checking.” Another breathless minute was followed by his answer, “Not from a colonized system.” This was followed a moment later by, “Not from any system that we can see…” he swept a mystified gaze over them, “…in the Milky Way.”

  “Are you sure?” asked one.

  “Well then, it’s coming from a space vessel,” suggested the project leader with the confident tone of one who has eliminated all other possibilities. There was a murmur of assent from a few of them.

  Leaping up, Katherine exclaimed, “No other system in the galaxy has ever manipulated the Overlay before.”

  “I’m not so sure anymore,” said the other woman.

  “If some other system has the capability to manipulate the Overlay,” mused the mechanic, “why haven’t we heard of it? News like that would spread quickly.”

  “Perhaps they have only just discovered it themselves.”

  “Highly coincidental.”

  “Could this be an endogenous phenomenon in the Overlay?” asked Lenny.

  “Sure,” said the mechanic, “our understanding is incomplete. To say the least.”

  “Maybe someone detected our experiment and is sending us a message,” suggested Katherine. In reply to their incredulous looks, she insisted, “Why not? That signal arrived only after we ran the test. It makes as much sense as anything else.”

  “Given the possibility another system has the capability,” began the other woman, “they must be farther along than us to be sending signals. But if they can, why wouldn’t we already know about it? We are getting a signal from someone who has had Overlay technology for… well, longer than us.”

  “Kaldis,” someone breathed.

  Nearly three million of the galaxy’s four hundred billion stars had been explored, either by humans or robot drones. Many hundreds of millions more had been examined with remote viewing technologies. Life was found frequently, every time a rocky planet or moon had the right conditions. A fraction of a percent of populated worlds had produced multicellular creatures, and a vanishingly small percentage had animal life large enough to be seen by the naked eye. Nothing like a mammal had ever been found, nor even a chordate, and certainly not intelligent life, but it was known that at least once, before Homo sapiens, there was intelligence in the universe. Before Homo erectus existed, there was at least one civilization in the galaxy, for the three million year old ruins of an alien race were unearthed on Kaldis.

  They were not extensive and existed only in one location. Probably it was an outpost; certainly not the alien homeworld. Allowing for the vast differences which might exist between the species of different worlds, it was estimated no more than a couple thousand lived at the site, and it had only been in use for about a century. That discovery occurred three hundred years ago, and nothing had come after. No one knew what happened to them, nor had signs of any others ever been discovered.

  “So are they responding to our experiment?” wondered the other woman out loud.

  “Let’s not get wild with speculation,” urged Lenny. “We still don’t know if this is just a natural effect of our manipulation.”

  “Julie, how fast is the signal traveling?” Katherine asked.

  Julie flew to her post and, after a few minutes, she heaved a sigh and sat back in her seat.

  “I can’t tell exactly how fast it’s coming in.” She paused a moment, then finally, softly, she said, “But it’s faster than the speed of light.”

  Her statement halted all activity. A few awed smiles were exchanged, a few giggles of anticipation suppressed, and then they were back to work.

  “Faster than the speed of light,” Katherine heard the man on Julie’s other side say. “They detected our technology and they’re trying to communicate. They could be a billion light years away and communicating with us as if they were in the next room.”

  “We don’t know anything yet,” warned Lenny. “Let’s try to act like scientists. Do we have no way of finding the source?”

  “Oh, we can find the source,” said the mechanic. “With Overlay technology, absolutely. Give me decent funding and the right team and I’ll make something in a couple months.”

  “Alright, just keep recording for as long as the signal lasts. I’m long overdue for a report on the results.”

  “Talk sweet to ‘em.”

  “Get us some more funding.”

  Lenny smiled and, pausing to tuck his shirt into his pants, straightened his back as much as his cane would allow and left the room as quickly as his venerable legs would carry him.

  Chapter 42

  A hollow metallic pop awakened Alistair from his turbulent slumber. His exhaustion overcame his discomfort and he had nodded off but, as the door opened, the realization of what awaited him swept away all grogginess on a wave of adrenaline. These were to be the last hours of his life.

  His eyes watered in protest of the invading light slashing at him. Wincing, he shifted, ready to spring if his captors made the mistake of coming without a dreadbot. The narrow line of sight afforded him by the open door did not yet reveal anyone, so he waited for the other to make the first move.

  “You can come on out,” said a bored voice.

  Alistair struggled out of the box and stood up to his full height. His jailor was sloppily dressed in a Civil Guard uniform, with his shirt untucked, his pants wrinkled and two days’ growth of beard. He held a clipboard in his left hand while he yawned into his right, leaning all the while on the door he had just opened. To the jailor’s left, far better groomed and impeccably dressed in a high ranking official’s Civil Service uniform Alistair knew did not belong to him, was Gerald.

  It was almost more than he was prepared to handle. His lips parted in surprise as he met his brother’s stoic gaze, but Gerald feigned disinterest.

  “Is this the transfer?” the jailor asked.

  “I believe this is him.”

  Holding out the clipboard, which doubled as a computer, the jailor instructed Alistair, “L
ook into the screen, would ya’?”

  He managed to wrest his gaze from his brother’s face and glanced at the small screen. A moment later his picture appeared, the one taken the day he enlisted. Next to it was his name and a few vital statistics.

  “OK, Alistair Ashley 3nn. You’ve got the form?”

  Gerald handed the man a piece of paper and he, upon glancing over it, frowned.

  “This is the old form.” Gerald said nothing. “We’re not supposed to use the old forms anymore.”

  “Dear sir,” Gerald began in his best tone of bored haughtiness, “you may have noticed we have only just reoccupied the city. We have captains serving as messenger boys, we have cooks acting as nurses, and we don’t always have every form we need right at our fingertips.”

  The jailor was dubious but he accepted the paper, feeding it into the slot on the bottom of his clipboard. “They said these were all going to be electronic soon.”

  “I think they have other concerns at the moment.”

  “Greg and Ryan were supposed to be with me,” Alistair blurted out, his heart beating furiously. He worried his blushing would give him away, but if he had seen his own filthy face that worry would have been laid to rest. No blush was going to show through the grime and beard.

  The jailor regarded Alistair with a raised eyebrow and then turned this look at Gerald. “It’s not on the transfer form.”

  “I didn’t put them on because they have already been transferred,” Gerald said smoothly, without pause or catch in his voice. Alistair suppressed a sigh of relief as Gerald continued, “Check to make sure, would you?”

  “Which prisoners?”

  “Gregory Lushington 8tu,” said Gerald, “and… I forget the other.”

  “Ryan Wellesley,” Alistair supplied the name, staring at his feet and trying not to sound breathless. “I don’t know his suffix code.”

  The jailor gave a dubious and irritated look but typed the info on his clipboard nonetheless. “Gregory Lushington 8tu and Ryan Wellesley 7aa. Nope. They’re still here.”