by S. L. Viehl
“I’m just lucky that way.”
“Maggie put it there.” He brushed his knuckles against my cheek before I could move my head. “She has never cared for you. You’re a primitive. The unnatural offspring of an undesirable. You might have a formidable immune system, but to the Jxin you were nothing more than a suitable storage container.”
I kept my expression blank. “Maybe I volunteered.”
“Give up your precious humanity to serve the Jxin? I think not. But you needn’t worry about it.” He patted my shoulder. “Maggie and I will be separating you from the infinity crystal, and everything else that has tainted you. Then you will assist me in saving our homeworld.”
“Odnalla is a great big dead scorched rock,” I reminded him. “So are your people.”
“Now they are.” He gestured at Maggie. “When the Jxin opens a new rift for me, we will do exactly as you wished. We will return to an earlier time in my people’s past, and use the crystal to help them finally attain what is rightfully theirs.”
I shook my head. “You’ll just blow up the planet and create the black crystal sooner than you did the last time.”
“Not if we go back to the time before the Jxin marooned us on that wasteland of a world.” He smiled. “When those self- righteous idiots were still mortal enough to be killed.”
The Jxin hadn’t simply created me. They had been the mythological founding race, the first species of intelligent life in the universe. Before they had vanished from history, they had planted the seeds of life on countless worlds. If the shifter murdered them, he would wipe out all life in my time.
“Maggie,” I said carefully. “I know you can hear what we’re saying. You have to fight this. You have to help me.”
Her gaze shifted to my face, and for a moment I saw a glimmer of understanding. Then the whites of her eyes disappeared, swallowed up by liquid black.
I turned to Joseph. “I’m not the only immortal in this time. One of the others will stop you.”
“Who? Reever? He is on the planet with your brat. The oKiaf and all the others will soon be infected.” He grabbed me by the throat. “Now it’s time for surgery, daughter.”
I fought him, of course. I punched and kicked and clawed as he dragged me over to the table and strapped me down. Maggie followed him like a drone, moving equipment out of the way and helping to hold me down as he put me in restraints. She didn’t respond to anything I said to her, and when I looked into her eyes, I could see the black crystal glittering inside her, ugly and cold.
Joseph grew tired of me fighting, I suppose, because he slammed a mask over my nose and mouth and held it there until whatever he pumped into my lungs made my vision blur and my body go limp. It seemed I was still human enough for him to knock out, because I went from there into blackness.
I woke up stretched out on my back, staring up at Terran sky. I was in a shockball stadium, dressed in a uniform, holding the object of the game, the beautiful cold silver sphere. The shockball that had been programmed to murder my husband.
Someone helped me to my feet, and led me out onto the field. It was a drone official, moving me away from the crowd. Everyone had fallen silent.
“We cannot disable the game computer,” the official was saying. “If you do not release the sphere, you will die.”
Even now, if I released the sphere, it would automatically seek out Duncan. I wasn’t going to let that happen. Going out on the field was to protect everyone else, I realized. I stumbled along, ears ringing, vision blurring.
Jericho was dead. Joseph was dead. I clutched the hot sphere tighter between my palms. They were dead, but Reever would live.
The official checked the players’ board. “The last penalty shall be administered in five, four, three . . .”
The hysterical crowd chanted down the clock, then suddenly hushes. Behind me, a woman screamed. Everyone was standing on their feet, looking up at a lone figure, standing on the edge of the highest tier of seats.
Another crazy fan, determined to have the best view. What a game.
The final, lethal jolt hit me. It knocked me flat on my back. The alloy between my hands began to glow a dull red. I clenched my chattering teeth and endured the charge, holding the sphere up, high above my head, so everyone could see.
Look at me. Watch me burn.
I forgot about the pain when I saw the lone figure leap out into space. Thousands of voices shrieked their shock and horror as the figure hurtled down toward me and certain death.
As I twisted and writhed, so did the figure. Was it some kind of poltergeist, suffering with me, burning with me? No, it was tearing off its outer clothes. Another dark-haired twin who arched up and at the last moment spread out his two enormous, gleaming black wings.
Released.
I shed that memory along with the confines of my agonized body, and flew up not into the sky but through the ship. I had never felt such utter lightness, such freedom, to glide through the corridors, and zip around the crew as they moved past me. They didn’t see me, and to my view their movement seemed slow, their voices a dull, droning jabber.
I left the ship to hover outside and look upon Joren. The only world that had ever welcomed me was trapped by rings of ships packed with frightened, angry strangers. They were burning inside, where no one could see. They wanted to die, as I had, that bright and beautiful day on Terra, but not to save the ones they loved, and not even to end their unseen torment.
They wanted to die because they were afraid to live.
I looked back at the ship. I didn’t have to return there, to the body that I’d left in Medical, or the two immortals who were tearing it apart. I could go on to where I had traveled before, where no one would ever touch me or need me or hurt me again. Where I would never again feel tired, or cold, or lonely.
I would feel nothing, forever.
A flare of light caught my eye, and I turned to see debris streaming around me, the remnants of a refugee ship that had just exploded. Parts of the ship flew past me to pelt the hull of the Sunlace. Instead of bouncing off it, they clung, spreading black tendrils as they ate into the alloy.
Without even thinking, I lifted one hand, and a lovely golden light shimmered out of me. As soon as it touched the black crystal, the malignant mineral stopped burrowing and crystallized.
I knew it was only a temporary measure. Even with the power I possessed now, I couldn’t destroy it. Nothing could.
I felt an invisible tidal wave of terror pass through me as another world was taken by the black crystal. The terrible emotion was not mine; it belonged to every being consumed on that world. There would be more soon, and still more, and then the last flickers of life would be extinguished, and what had been would never be again.
And then I knew.
As much as I wanted to go, I couldn’t leave them to die like this.
I slipped back into the ship, and moved through its corridors, my soul growing heavier the closer I came to my flesh. I stopped only outside the room, afraid now to see what he had done to me. Still, I knew that the end of his work was the beginning of mine.
I passed through the door.
People shouted all around me, and when I opened my eyes, Shon was standing over me and calling for help. It felt wrong, to be on that table, to be where I was. Everything remained the same . . . except me.
I pushed myself up with heavy hands, and saw Shon bare his teeth. “What happened? Where is Maggie and the shifter?” What was wrong with my voice? I sounded terrible. I touched my throat, expecting to feel bruises.
The oKiaf grabbed me by the shoulders and looked into my eyes. “Who are you?”
“I’m Cherijo.” I frowned. “Who did you think I was? Jarn?”
“What was the name of the ’Zangian who taught me to swim?” he demanded.
“Jadaira. Why are you testing my knowledge of you?” When he didn’t answer, I swung my legs off the table and lurched to my feet. All my muscles felt thick and strange. “We have to trac
k down the shifter before he—” I halted as I saw the pale reflection of my face on the inside of the view panel. “What?”
As I said that final word, I saw the jaw move, and the image reach up to cup it and hold it. I watched as blunt fingers moved across the thin lips, up over the prominent nose, and across the wide brows.
I looked down, and saw my breasts were gone. I reached down and felt the ridges in my abdomen.
I didn’t touch the unfamiliar, suspended weight between my legs. I didn’t have to; I already knew what that was.
No.
I reached for an instrument tray, dumping its contents before I held the shiny surface up to my face. In it, I saw a young, hard face. The face of a brilliant physician as it had been twenty years ago.
Maggie and I will be separating you from the infinity crystal, and everything else that has tainted you. . . .
Joseph had kept his promise. I had been changed to what I had been before he and Maggie had altered me. The clone of Joseph Grey Veil’s cells. A perfect copy of all that he had been.
I had been changed back into a male.
PART FOUR
Forever
Sixteen
“How far has the black crystal progressed?” I said in a younger version of my father’s voice.
“Hanar TssVar has sent part of his fleet to form a blockade of Varallan,” the oKiaf said. “It seems to have slowed the invasion in this part of the quadrant.”
“What about the shifter, and Maggie?”
“He took her to his launch,” Shon said. “They escaped from the ship an hour ago. We saw you go with them.”
I sat down on the edge of the table before I fell down. “He must have assumed my appearance in order to get past the guards.”
“No. The shifter used another form.” He checked the results of the DNA sampler and gave me a bleak look. “Your DNA is very close to the profile in Cherijo’s medical records. If you are her, the most significant change has been made to your chromosomes, in order to change your gender.”
“If I am? You still don’t believe me?” I felt a surge of unfamiliar aggression. “How would you like me to prove my identity, Shon? Retinal scan? Fingerprints? They’ve all been altered. Since the Odnallak are telepathic, any memory I offer would be suspect. I’d perform an operation, but we don’t have any patients who need surgery.”
“I can confirm who you are,” a deep voice said.
I couldn’t believe Reever had returned to the ship. “What are you doing here?” I demanded as he came and tried to take my hands in his. I jerked them away. “Tell me you didn’t bring Marel back with you.”
“I left our daughter on the planet, Waenara.” He glanced at Shon. “This is Cherijo.”
Now I knew why he’d grabbed my hands. “You brought him up here just to confirm my identity, when we could already be going after the shifter and Maggie?”
“We signaled Reever as soon as we reviewed the security vids. I thought he would want to join us.” Shon started to say something else, and then turned to my husband. “Perhaps you should be the one to tell him.”
“Her,” I corrected. “I don’t care what they did to my body; I’m still female. What about the vids?”
Reever put a hand on my shoulder. “I will replay them for you.”
“While we do that, I want you to prepare a suspension tank,” I told Shon. “Prep the solution for tissue and organ reconstruction.”
“Why?”
I went out to my office, ignoring the hateful looks my staff were giving me, and took the blood samples I’d drawn from my specimen storage unit. “This blood contains the DNA I had before he did this. You’re going to use it to alterform me.”
“I cannot,” Shon said. “The process takes months.”
“Not if we use the retrovirus I designed for PyrsVar.” I sat down at my console. “Show me the vids, Reever.”
He pulled up the images recorded by the monitors in launch bay. They showed Maggie and Xonea flanking a small, hunched-over figure. The three walked toward the Odnallak craft, when suddenly the figure in the middle wrenched free and grabbed a cutter from a toolbox. She brandished it like a club, and managed to hit Xonea several times in the head and chest before he knocked it away, hoisted her up under his arm, and carried her kicking and screaming up the ramp.
I reached out to enable the audio, and listened to the struggling female’s shrieks. She used a garbled form of Terran that I barely understood, and hearing that voice was like being punched in the chest. As Xonea struggled to carry her inside the craft, she turned her face toward the recording drone and called again for help. I knew the face, of course, but this was the first time I’d met the mind behind it.
“This is why you came back to the ship,” I said to Reever.
“It is why they signaled me,” he said.
Of course he’d come back to the ship. It all made perfect sense now. “How do you think he did it?”
He sat in the chair opposite mine. “We cannot know what happened in the surgical suite, but the nurse he impersonated has not been found on the ship.”
“He probably used her body as a scaffold for the DNA sequences he removed from mine. Maggie had the power to do the rest.” I paused the replay so I could look at her a little longer. I felt a strange sense of the inevitable, as if this moment had been coming since the League transport had crashed on Akkabarr. “Nice to finally meet you, Jarn.”
I replayed the vid another time. The Akkabarran fought like a combat veteran, with quick, economical movements that conserved energy and at the same time delivered the maximum amount of force. She also wore my body like she had been born to it. In a sense, she had; twice now.
Suddenly I couldn’t look at her for another second, and switched off the display. “Just before he put me under, the shifter said he was going to create another rift and go back to an earlier time to save the Odnallak and kill Jxin. Maggie said something about space being thin in certain places. To create a new rift, he might have to go back to where the first one appeared. TssVar will probably be happy to lend you one of his attack raiders; they can jump there in no time.”
Reever blocked my path. “I will relate that to the captain, so that he can alert the Faction. But I am not leaving you.”
“I’m going to be naked and floating in a tank for the immediate future,” I advised him. “If the retroviral delivery system works, I should be a little more interesting to look at in approximately three hours. If it doesn’t, I definitely won’t.”
“You don’t have to do this for me.”
Oh, that hurt. “I’m glad Jarn is back. I hope you two are very happy together. But you’ll have to forgive my vanity. I really don’t feel like standing up to urinate for the rest of my life.” I went around him.
He followed me into the submersion treatment room. “You mistake my meaning. You do not have to risk your life in order to be female. I will love you no matter what you are.”
“If you haven’t noticed, Reever,” I said, my big hands becoming very large fists, “I’ve turned into my father.”
“No,” he said. “You could never do that.”
“Right. Well, as tolerant as you might feel toward the prospect of a same-gender relationship, I really can’t see you having sex with Joseph Grey Veil.” I folded my fists under my upper arms. “Not when you could have Jarn in my body.”
“I don’t want Jarn.”
“Hello. You were in love with Jarn. And she’s back, and I’m a guy, and . . .” I threw up my hands. “Why are we even arguing about this?”
“You are arguing.” He pulled me into his arms and kissed me.
Although my mouth was different, kissing my husband felt the same. Unfortunately other things began to happen, and I pulled back as all sorts of muscles and things I’d never had as a woman began to tighten and throb.
“Well, it seems the new equipment works.” I glanced down and winced. “Are erections always this uncomfortable? No, don’t tell me.”
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Shon made a polite, coughing sound before he joined us. “The tank is ready, and I’ve placed your DNA sample into the solution. As soon as you’re submerged, I’ll infuse the tank with the retrovirus.”
I began stripping out of my clothes, trying not to look at my body and, of course, failing. “I can’t believe all this body hair. You men must do nothing but sweat.” I glanced at Shon. “Sorry.”
He shrugged. “I could never imagine how it feels to walk around in all that bare skin.”
Once I was naked, I went over to the tank and climbed up the short ladder on the side. “This had better not be freezing. I hate cold baths.”
“I warmed it to the same temperature as your body.” Shon brought a large syringe over to one of the infuser ports on the side of the tank, and handed me a tube with a mouthpiece on one end. “Oxygen feed,” he said. “You will have to be completely immersed. I would sedate you, but you will have to remain conscious in order to keep from aspirating the fluid.”
Which meant I was going to feel everything. Oh, joy.
“Don’t remove me from the tank until it’s finished. Whatever happens, I’ll survive it.” I looked at my husband. “See you when I’m a girl again.” I inserted the mouthpiece, lifted my feet, and sank into the fluid.
I saw Reever through the side of the tank, his hand pressed against it. I matched my palm to his before I turned my head and nodded to Shon, who injected the compound.
Minutes ticked by as I breathed through the tube and let the fluid soak into me. The first sensation I felt was a faint prickling sensation all over my body as the compound entered my pores.
The harsh in-and-out of my breathing echoed in my head as warmth spread over me, and my skin tightened. I closed my eyes, trying to relax as the warmth became heat. Nerve endings flared as my muscles knotted and contracted, making me feel as if a million insects were crawling over my skin. I clenched my teeth against the mouthpiece as those insects stopped crawling and began biting.
I was burning up, the tank’s fluid cold against my fiery skin. Spasms racked my limbs steadily, and I fought back the panic and sense of smothering. I could still breathe, I could endure this. Just as I had before. . . .