by Chris Walley
“Powers? Not ‘power problems’?”
“The wording is precise, if ambiguous. Powers. With a capital letter.”
“Surely it was just a tall tale?”
“The obvious conclusion but for one very odd fact. The Argo Review Commission, made up of a dozen men and women, met in closed session in 2099. It met for a week, adjourned, and then resumed with an enlarged board of six extra people. It met for another month. They made two recommendations: first, that the Argo report must remain forever unpublished, and second, that no further attempts were ever to be made to explore Below-Space. Gate links were fine, but going outside them was not.”
“Odd.” Vero stared at Perena with tired eyes. “Why did they enlarge the board? To put on more psychologists?”
An odd, distant expression crossed Perena’s face “No, Vero, it wasn’t psychologists. It was theologians.”
“Theologians?”
“The six extra people were the Custodians of the Faith.”
Merral suddenly felt cold. “Perena,” he said, “they felt that there was something wrong in Below-Space?”
Perena paused, looked at Vero, and began again. “I think—and it is partly a guess—that they concluded that in deep Below-Space there were spiritual forces, elemental powers. Influences. Something like that.”
Vero frowned and shook his head. “It has always been a belief that, if allowed to, human beings always go too far and become, either directly or indirectly, involved with evil powers. That is why we have checks and controls. But I had never heard that it might be so literally true. Nevertheless, Perena, I am not sure I see how this affects us now. We have more pressing problems.”
Perena looked at him, her eyes troubled. “I have not finished. I have another piece of information for you. But let me first ask you a question: Assuming the intruders did destroy the Gate, why did they do it?”
Vero opened his hands wide. “It’s obvious. They wanted to kill us. To stop us getting through with the news.”
“I am not so sure.” The voice was quiet.
Vero gave her a look of astonishment. “There are few things that I now take for granted, but that was one of them. I mean, isn’t it obvious?”
“Surprisingly, no. Did either of you notice when the explosion happened with respect to your scheduled entry into the Gate?”
“I did,” Merral said. “Now you mention it, it was after entry time. A few minutes later.”
“Yes.” Perena’s firm tone brooked no argument. “It exploded at 11:07. You would have entered at 11:02, so that by then you would have been exactly midway between Gates.”
Vero stared at Perena in astonishment. “I had never thought . . . What would have happened?”
“A good question and one the spatial physicists—there are two of them here—will have to work on. It has never happened. But the Normal-Space tube would have collapsed instantly and you would have dropped out into Below-Space. At the deepest point of your traverse, you—”
“—would have done what the Argo did.” Vero’s voice trembled.
Merral suddenly felt an urgent longing to be on the ground and to never, ever leave it again.
Vero, swallowing hard, was staring at Perena, his eyes open in a wild surmise. “What did this envoy say about what the enemy wanted to do again?”
“He said ‘The enemy wishes to seize you.’ Not destroy . . .”
For a moment Merral could only close his eyes as a wave of fear and horror broke over him. He felt his body shake.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that Vero had drifted over to the window and was gazing down at the planet. There was a long silence.
Finally, after perhaps a minute, Vero spoke. “I see why you told us this, Perena. It is horrific but is also suggestive . . .”
Vero stared toward Ancient Earth and wagged a finger slowly in that direction. Then, still looking outward, he began to speak in a slow-paced and almost dreamy voice. “Perena, Merral, let me tell you a story. About something that happened—or may have happened—a long, long time ago. As we know, frustrated by the restrictions of the infant Assembly, William Jannafy and his followers rebelled and, after much bloodshed, took control of the Centauri Gate and the colony. There, free from the restrictions of the Assembly, Jannafy encouraged exploration and experimentation into areas that had been forbidden. He had human beings altered genetically and joined with animal tissues to suit his ends—had new races made. And he sent ships deep into Below-Space. There . . .”
Vero paused, his brown eyes focused on infinity. “There they found more than they had bargained for.” He hesitated. “What shall we call them? Powers, elemental spirits? Perhaps the older word demons might be better. Was Jannafy influenced by them? Did he do a deal with them then? Maybe even he held back from that. I do not know. But then, in the sudden assault at Centauri, he was slain and his men saw that their end was hours away. They chose to save themselves by fleeing to safety through deep Below-Space.” He shook his head. “And what price, I wonder, did these Powers and influences exact for safe passage?”
Merral shuddered as Vero paused to let his words sink in. “So in my story, the remains of the Free Peoples fled through Below-Space to the edge of our galaxy. There they survived. But now they were bound to the Powers and they were no longer free. From them they learned—or were taught—new things, such as how to make dead creatures live again and how to use them for their ends. And as the millennia passed, their hatred of the Assembly showed no lessening.”
Then Vero turned round suddenly to face them and raised his voice. “And now, they have returned to the Assembly. After long years, Jannafy’s descendants are back and they bring evil with them.”
Vero paused and gave Perena a questioning look. “Is this—or something like this—what you think happened?”
“Yes,” she whispered, and there was fear in her eyes.
Vero turned to Merral. “My friend, you have just heard this story. But tell me, do you think it may be true?”
An urge rose in Merral’s mind to deny it all, to protest that Vero’s words were nonsense, a wild fiction. But he could not.
“Vero,” he heard himself eventually say, “I wish I could say it was false. But what you say has a ring of truth to me.”
Vero nodded but said nothing more, and in the end it was Merral who broke the silence. “So, if this tale is true, what are we to do?”
A shadow of a grin crept over Vero’s face. “Ah, our soldier here asks about action. I rejoice we have you with us, Merral. I truly do. But, please, answer your own question.”
Merral knew what he had to say. “If this is the case then, once more, the Assembly must fight them.”
“Amen,” whispered Perena.
“We fight,” Merral said, aware that he was repeating himself. “We have no option. However awesome the odds and however terrible the enemies we face.”
“Indeed.” Vero turned to look out of the window. “The first step is that we need to find the source of these creatures. Somewhere down there is a ship.”
Merral was aware that all three of them were looking where the line of night was now creeping to the westernmost edge of the Lannar Crater.
Perena gestured to the western Rim Ranges, their valleys deep in shadow. “The satellite data is coming in, but I have to say that if there are intruders there, then they are hidden. Anya and I had a quick examination yesterday; we found no settlements or landing strips.”
“They will be hidden,” Vero said with confidence. “Our opponents know the techniques of war. On a vast, unknown, and sparsely populated planet like this, they could find many hiding places.”
Merral stared silently down, struck now by the scale of things. He felt he was seeing the immense bleak brown wastes, the vast rolling green forests, the dark pinnacled mountains, and the ever-expanding marshy deltas for the first time. How odd, for a world entirely made by mankind, that there is so little evidence of our race’s presence. Here pinpricks of light in th
e new darkness, there a gleaming vapor trail left by some long-haul passenger flier, elsewhere a few small, extended star shapes of the cities. So much of this world, he thought, has been left to evolve its own way, and all we have done is sow, watch, and—where needed—prune. Now what he would once have seen as a glorious challenge had become an ominous threat. Farholme, and especially humanity on Farholme, suddenly seemed terribly vulnerable. We would be threatened enough by our enforced isolation, he thought, even without this intruder threat. With it, we seem to be in such a great peril as to make our future a dubious matter.
Merral spoke aloud. “Even if we were the entire Assembly, to encounter such an opposition as we fear that we face would be daunting. But as one world?”
“Yes, but we have had the encouragement of Perena’s visitor. If he was not an angel himself, then his counsel was angelic. The King does still reign. We are to watch and stand firm. And to hope.”
Merral said, “I will hold onto those words. I am grateful for them. Nevertheless we face an almost overwhelming task.”
“True,” Perena said, looking at her watch. “But we need to return to Farholme. There we will gather together and decide what we do. And I must go see Captain Bennett. Can I meet you both at Shuttle Dock Two in an hour? The Eliza N’geno will be refueled by then.”
Vero nodded. “Good. We need to be back down. Anyway I’m not sure I care for this view; it’s too overwhelming. Besides I want to lie down, or whatever is the equivalent when there is no down. Merral, see you at the ship.” He turned to Perena and cautiously bowed his head. “Captain Lewitz, my thanks for your news and for your encouragement. And,” he sighed, “for your sympathy.”
Then slowly and clumsily, aided by a gentle push from Perena, Vero exited up through the hatchway. Perena shook her head as his feet scrabbled for a hold on a rung and then disappeared out of view.
She looked back at Merral. “Staying here?”
He nodded. “Yes, for a few more minutes. I just want to admire the view a bit longer. I may not get the chance again for a long, long time.”
Perena nodded slowly. “True enough. But you can’t stay much longer; the sun will come in at the window, then the glare will wipe out everything.”
Merral stared down at the blue, brown, and green hemisphere below and sighed. “Perena,” he said slowly, “you know what I have just thought?”
“No, tell me.”
“Vero has lost his world and is going back now to a new one. But less obviously, I think, we are too.”
“Yes,” she said and her voice was barely audible. “You are right. What did Jorgio say? ‘Things have changed’?”
“Indeed they have. But it is not just the Gate that has gone. It is the old Farholme. The world we knew has ended.”
“Yes,” she said, leaning her head against the window, and he realized that she had shed many tears recently. “I know. I fear that we will find that soon nothing is the same. But we will fight, Merral. We mustn’t give in.”
He found that her voice had a strange quality of resolution in it that challenged and encouraged him.
She nodded to herself, then bobbed over and patted him gently on the back. “Look, I must go. We need to start the prelaunch checks. See you at the shuttle dock.”
“You will.”
She touched him on the shoulder and then slid away and pirouetted up out of the hatchway with the grace of someone to whom the absence of gravity was a joy.
In the silence that followed, Merral stood suspended in the chamber, staring down at the world. He watched for several minutes as twilight followed by night continued its silent and inexorable creep across the planet. He absorbed trivial details now: the smoke from the rift system volcanoes, the brown smudge of a dust storm careening across the Northern Wastes, and the light shimmering on some infant upland glaciers. Ynysmant—with his parents and Isabella—now lay in darkness, its feeble light output too small to be visible from up here. To the west, the sun had just set over Ranapert and Halmacent Cities, where pinpricks of light were forming in the purple twilight. Farther west still, the daylight was coming to a close on Isterrane, and on either side of the city the wooded headlands stood proud in the golden evening light. In the extreme west, the late afternoon shadows were lengthening over the high and rugged Varrend Tablelands with their vast lakes and coiling rivers.
Merral thought about the people that were within his field of view. With a sweep of his head he could see where half of Farholme’s entire population lived. And tonight, he said to himself, they will all be looking skyward for only the second day in their history to see the Gate gone and the beacons broken. And all except the very youngest will know that no Made World has ever been as alone as Farholme is now. But of all that population, he knew that there were only four of them who realized that the threat was far more terrible than the peril of mere isolation.
“My world,” he whispered, and he heard the words ring with a compassionate intensity. “I’m sorry we didn’t bring back help. I’m sorry that Perena and Vero and Anya and I are all that there is. Apart from the King.”
He paused. “Lord,” he said in a tone so soft that he could barely hear himself, “I don’t really know what is happening. And I don’t know what we face, and what I’ve heard and seen scares me. Especially because everyone seems to look to me for a lead. But Lord,” he went on, suddenly aware of his reflection in the glass, “I love this place and I hate what has happened to it. And if you can use me to save it or restore it, then I offer myself to you.” He bowed his head.
Do you mean it? something—or someone—seemed to ask. Was it, Merral wondered, an inquiry that he was asking himself, or was another asking him? He hesitated, thinking of the terror of the fighting he had been involved in already, and of the possible cost.
He had no choice. He exhaled heavily. “Yes,” he said, “I mean it.”
It was time to go to the ship, descend to the planet, meet Anwar Corradon, and prepare for whatever the future might bring. He drifted to the hatchway and reached up to put his fingers on the lowest ladder rung.
He took a last look at his fragile and beautiful world below.
“I promise,” he said aloud. “I promise.”
Suddenly, a brilliant ray of sun, unheralded by any forewarning in the dustless vacuum of space, slid into the compartment, filling the far corner with a brilliant yellow-white glow.
“Amen,” muttered Merral.
Then, with a sharp tug on the rung, he propelled himself toward the shuttle dock.
21
It is like being at the prow of a ship, thought Merral Stefan D’Avanos, as he gazed southward out of the rain-drenched windows of the Planetary Affairs building at the sodden houses, roads, and parks of Isterrane below. Beyond the high gray wall that protected the city from storm and earthquake waves, he could faintly make out the angry white breakers of the ocean’s edge. A storm. How appropriate. A storm has been unleashed on this planet—the Gate has been destroyed and Farholme is isolated from the rest of the Assembly. And we must face what it brings. Do the others feel this? Merral turned around slowly to stare at the three figures who sat round the dark wood table, awaiting the arrival of Representative Corradon. Vero, dressed in a green jacket and trousers with a definite non-Farholme cut, sat at the far end of the table, staring abstractedly at the large mural of the woodlands of the High Varrend that filled the end wall. Merral sensed that the bland expression on his face barely concealed a profound dejection. Vero reminded him of a lost child. But then, wasn’t that exactly what he was? It would take forty years for any message to reach them from the Assembly, fifty years for a ship to come. In what sense did a family continue to exist after half a century of total separation? To the right of Vero sat the slight but erect figure of Perena Lewitz. Dressed in a deep blue space pilot’s uniform, she was staring out of the windows, her expression unreadable. Merral knew the uniform was unnecessary for this meeting and suspected that it was an act of defiance against events. The
Gate might be gone and, consequently, her flying curtailed, but Perena would wear the uniform nonetheless. There was always something insubstantial and reserved about Perena, and here, amid the gathering storm, both qualities seemed emphasized.
Perena’s sister, Anya, sat next to her, and Merral noted the contrasts between them. Anya, with a heavier build and longer, redder hair, wore a beige pullover and trousers that teetered on the edge of informality. She was staring at a pile of papers with a deep frown, and as she shuffled them in evident consternation, he felt a longing to put his hand on her shoulder to reassure her. Vero rose and joined Merral at the window.
“My friend,” he said lightly, the accent of Ancient Earth plain in his voice, “I have made a decision to keep some of my suspicions quiet.”
“Which?” Merral was aware of the others listening.
“Up there,” Vero said, gesturing skyward to where the hexagon of the Gate had hung, “I made guesses. I guessed that, despite everything that our history has told us, elements of Jannafy’s rebellion somehow escaped destruction at Centauri in 2110. I guessed that they survived, fled, developed in ways we cannot imagine, and now, over eleven thousand years later, they have come back.”
“Where, on the very edge of the Assembly, we have encountered them.”
“Perhaps.”
Perena had joined them now, her face showing curiosity. “But why do you wish to keep these guesses silent?”
“I simply have no proof. It is all speculation.” Vero shook his head. “Our tale is extraordinary enough without my adding to it. I think we had best stick to facts. Theories can wait.”
Anya leaned back in her chair. “Makes sense, Vero. I barely believe it myself. But, Merral, reassure me—you will take the lead in any discussion? Please?”
Merral hesitated. “I think it is Vero who should speak. He has had suspicions longer than any of us that something was wrong. He is a sentinel.”