Babylon 5 10 - Psi Corps 01 - Dark Genesis - Birth Of Psi Corpus (Keyes, Gregory)

by Birth Of Psi Corpus (Keyes, Gregory)

  chapter 2

  Senator Khalid Ahmed of the United Islamic Nations (UIN) had a sleek face, the eyes of a tiger, and a smile that meant nothing at all. That he appeared on the comscreen and not in person diminished his presence not in the slightest. "Director Vacit," he said. "I hope you are well today." "Very well, thank you, Senator. What can I do for you?" "You can explain to me why you are preparing the Varona for a Venus run. Correct me if I'm wrong, Director, but I'm fairly certain that-as lead boils on its surface-there are no rogue telepaths on Venus." "You never know where you will find rogues, Senator." "Mr. Vacit, you have never been known for your humor. I respectfully suggest that it is too late in your career to begin trying to build a reputation for it. We both know where rogues can be found--here, on Earth, on every continent, in every country. And yet, oddly enough, though you direct a well-funded, highly organized institution with broader discretionary powers than any similar organization on or off Earth, these rogues seem to not only be thriving, but doing more damage each day. Bombings all over the globe. Schoolchildren snatched from testing lines. Three reeducation camps `liberated' in as many months. And here you want to jaunt off to Venus." "There's been a murder there, on the orbiting station." "Fine. Send a telepath-on the next supply transport." "The killer may have been a rogue telepath, as I told you, and thus the matter requires Psi Corps investigation." "In that case, I require the details of the case." "You will have them. When I return. I'm already on Station Prime, and our departure window draws near." 212 "Perhaps you can simply tell me why the director of Psi Corps needs to go along on a simple murder investigation." "It's within my boundaries as director." "Yes, it is. But that isn't a reason." Kevin replied with a simple shrug. Ahmed turned a shade darker. "I have to tell you, Director, many of us have grown concerned over leadership at Psi Corps. You might want to keep that in mind." In other words, some of you have begun to think yourselves powerful enough to retire me, Kevin thought, as he acknowledged the statement by i nclining his head and severing the link. "Sir?" "Yes, Ms. Alexander?" He turned and immediately had to catch himself as his Earth-born reflexes again betrayed him in the zero gravity They still had an hour or so of turnaround-it was always wise to run a few tests on the fusion drive before kicking it back on for the deceleration leg of the journey. Even though he understood that, he would be happier when he had weight again, even if it was the result of confused inertia rather than the product of real gravity. "May I ask a question?" "You've been my assistant for what fifteen years now? I suppose you may." "Why are we going to Venus?" "Such impertinence," he responded wryly. "Yes, sir, I know, but after four days in a ship, one begins to wonder these things." "Aren't you enjoying your book? Isn't it keeping your interest ?" "Yes, sir. I mean, l suppose. Did this Bester ever write anything else?" "Yes, he did, and it is probably the second-best work of twentieth-century speculative fiction. The one you're reading is the best. You don't agree?" "I haven't read much science fiction, modern or ancient. It'swell , the language is strange. It's amusing that they refer to 'scanning ' as `peeping,' though. I suppose I don't really see the point in the literature as a whole. All in all, Bester did a poor job of forecasting the future." Vacit fingered his chin. "The point of science fiction isn't to predict the future, but to imagine it. Those are two very different things. I didn't understand either, when Senator Crawford introduced me to the subject, but over time I finally grokked it." "Sir?" "Never mind." "I'll keep reading, sir." She hesitated. "And if you can't answer the question, sir-about why we're going to Venus-you can just tell me so, rather than distracting me." "We're going to Venus to find what was in the hole in Antarctica ," he said. Her eyes went very wide, not something he often saw them do anymore. It reminded him of the much younger intern who had walked into his office, long ago. "What makes you-why Venus, sir?" He composed himself, reached out to make certain that no one else was within ear- or mindshot. No one was. Besides himself and Natasha, there was the flight crew-all P3s or under-and two Psi Cops, both presently asleep aft. As for electronic spies, his personal team had debugged the Varona. "This is for you only. Do you understand?" "Yes, sir." "Years ago-before you were born-I touched an alien artifact, one IPX had found on Mars. Not Centauri, not Nam, but produced by a technology like we've never seen-until that fragment you and I found in Yucatdn. The same technology, Ms. Alexander. Organic in nature, very advanced." "I see. Sir, you might have told me about this-" "The artifacts of which I speak are among EarthGov's most highly classified secrets, Ms. Alexander. I shouldn't be telling you about them even now. I do so only because of the great trust I have in you." "Yes, sir. I appreciate that, sir." "Then you will appreciate that what I tell you next is more than classified-it is unknown to everyone except me." She nodded. "The fragment from Yucatán-did you perceive anything unusual when you handled it?" "Not really, sir--but I'm only a P5." "The artifact from Mars had a certain-signature. When 1 touched it, I felt -I suppose I must call it awe. Ms. Alexander, you must know me well enough to know that I despise the unempirical , the untestable, particularly when considering them as a basis for action. I distrust what cannot be objectively verified. "Perhaps that is why I have waited all these years to act, to do anything about this, to even try to verify what I suspect because the basis of my suspicions are so-questionable." He paused to let that sink in. She did know him well. She didn't prompt or cajole him, but waited for him to continue, knowing he would. "I must digress again. When I was very young-eighty years ago, when I was four my mother died. She was holding me. She was a powerful teep, and I was, too, even at that age. I went with her, when she died, via a sort of involuntary deathbed scan. I went beyond the doorway, and I think I almost stayed there. I saw a Shalako-a sort of spirit my mother's people believe in. I felt it was good, and kind, and very powerful. And then it became my mother, giving me a gift. "I've always believed that the gift was real, in some sense. I think she gave me some of her strength, enhanced my abilities. As you know, the scales can't rate me, but I think I'm at least a P13. But since Antarctica, I have begun to question whether that is all that happened." "You felt something in Antarctica, I remember." "Yes. I felt a death-trace, one so old that it shouldn't have been there. I've sent Pl2s back to that site since-without telling them, of course, what to expect-and they felt only a faint presence, nothing like what I perceived. The same with the artifacts-while P12s feel something, they seem to receive no impressions as clear as my own." "But, as you say, sir, you are stronger than they. And at least you've obtained objective confirmation that your experience was the result of some external cause." He nodded reluctantly. "The death-trace in Antarctica was- familiar to me. It was something like the Shalako, from when I was young. And like the artifact from Mars and found, but stronger-stranger, and yet, more familiar. It was"- he struggled-"almost as though this was a piece of me. A part of myself I recognized." "That's not an uncommon phenomenon, sir, especially with teeps. "No, it's not, but in most cases it is an illusion, a trick of the mind. And so I wish to test this, as best I can. You asked what this has to do with Venus. The impression I got in Antarctica was of two beings, two Shalako, two-whatever they were. One had died, and it was his trace I felt. You remember the story you told me? About the two brothers who battled the lords of death? One died, and his essence remained on Earth, the other lived and became the morning star?" "Yes, sir." "The morning star is Venus." Natasha finally looked a little troubled. "Sir, I hope you have more to go on than that." "I do," he said, feeling frustrated. "But it's in here." He tapped his skull. "It's like I've known it for a long time. Like it's always been there. Yet it took you, and fifteen years, to convince me to actually trust it." She considered that for a moment, then looked at him frankly. "Sir, if you say you trust a feeling-well, I trust it, too." "Thank you, Ms. Alexander. There is a bit more-something a little more substantial. You remember that satellites had, in times past, mapped a gravitational and magnetic anomaly at the Antarctic site? Well, I've located a similar anomaly on Venus-so similar that it matches to w
ithin ninety-eight percent both in strength and dimensions. It's at the Venusian south pole. So it may be that I'm not entirely crazy. Nonetheless . . ." He paused. "Yes?" "Ms. Alexander, if you ever suspect I have gone mad, or even senile-I count on you to tell me." He expected her to laugh it off, but instead she pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Sir-I don't think you're mad, or senile. I've never thought so. But there is something I don't understand. It's been bothering me for some time now." "That being?" He felt her scanning-not him, but for "peepers." "Don't worry," he assured her. "Nothing is leaving this cabin unless we want it to." Even so, she lowered her voice to a whisper. "You could have shut the underground down ten years ago, shut it down cold. I'm certain of it. But you didn't, and I think you've even helped them a little. Why?" He cracked a rare grin. "I thought you had figured that out," he said. "I leaked it to you very slowly, watching you carefully the whole time." "But the risk-what would you have done had I tried to betray you?" "I honestly didn't think you would, but if you had-I don't really have to tell you, do IT' "No, sir." "And you really want the answer to this question? Even knowing that you may not like what you learn?" "Yes, sir. Very much." "When I first became Senator Crawford's aide, I was infiltrating the MRA organization-not to sabotage it, necessarily, but to understand it from the inside, to form an opinion of it. Over time, my opinion of it grew, and I began to see its importance. "When I touched the artifacts from Mars, I came to understand something else. Something truly profound. There are beings out there in the cosmos, Ms. Alexander, beside whom even the Centauri look like cavemen. Some, I'm certain, are benevolent- those who made the artifacts on Mars, for instance. At least so it seems. But I also have the impression-no, the certainty--that there are others, who could and would destroy our race with no more thought or effort than you and I would expend to kill a bug on our kitchen floor. "When we meet those beings, we will need every weapon we can get our hands on, and among those weapons I include ourselves . We will need the most powerful teeps we can find-more powerful than any we presently have, I think. Pl4s, P30s, if such a thing is possible. And stable telekinetics." He heaved a sigh. "I can't even tell you why I think that, exactly, and for some reason it angers me when I examine it closely. But I am certain." "So the arranged marriages were your idea. To prepare us to fight these aliens, if they truly exist?" "Oh, they exist. But no, the genetic matching was already in place when I started working for Crawford. I encouraged it." "And the underground? How does that fit?" "Evolution. Think about it. Which teeps escape the grasp of the Corps? The smartest, the strongest, those who best know how to work together and alone. The underground is the gene pool that we draw from. If it were to disappear-if there was no underground-we would lose the selective process. Intentional selection-breeding-can produce faster results, but evolution does the unexpected. I think-I thought, anyway-that we would need both to produce our be st future." Natasha turned her book over in her hand a few times, clearly disturbed by what had been said. "Speak your mind, Ms. Alexander." "I never-sir, I've always understood that you had some deeper agenda, some purpose that drove your actions. I've always admired you, always trusted your judgment. You've always seemed to be completely rational, governed by reason . . ." She stopped, apparently unable to finish. "You never imagined that, at the bottom of it all, there was an article of faith? I don't blame you for being disturbed, Ms. Alexander. I would be disappointed in you if you weren't. I've struggled with this for years myself." He turned for a moment to the small port, gazing out at the enigmatic stars beyond. "Let me put it another way, Ms. Alexander," he continued. "One you may find more palatable. Assume I'm wrong about our powerful, alien enemies, and my intuitions are proved just so much fantasy. We still have the normals to deal with. Right now, however much we hate to admit it, they are our masters. I am the director of Psi Corps only because they do not know what I am. The next director will probably be a mundane, and who can guess what direction politics might take in the future? "I have seen our situation shift too many times in my life. It will shift again. Perhaps one day they will decide that Earth would be better off without our kind altogether. If they have us all registered , all in the Corps, all in one place-well, that will make their job the easier, won't it? "Personally, I think the Corps is our best chance-already we have more power than EarthGov suspects. And one day-one fine day-normals will awaken to find that it is we who are the masters , as it should be. But that day is not yet come, and until it does, I think it wise not to keep all of our eggs in one basket. The underground is not the enemy, Ms. Alexander. Normals are the enemy." He turned away from the stars. "I've never said these things to anyone, Ms. Alexander. I once loved a woman, and I never even said them to her. But I grow old, now. And I know you-I know you understand me." Her gaze was steady on his again. "I think I understand you perfectly , sir. And agree completely." "And what do you think of my sanity now?" "I think," she replied, matter-of-factly, "that I have never met a saner man in my life." "Thank you. I trust you mean that. You've asked why we are going to Venus. The answer is that I think we'll find an answer there. We'll find our past, and in so doing-our future." The station commander pretended outrage when the Varona came into dock, but there was little he could do about it. There had, in fact, been a murder on board the Lucifer. It was unlikely in the extreme that a rogue teep had been involved, but Officers Trout and Sasaki-the two Psi Cops they had brought along-had their orders. When the Varona left Venus orbit, it would be with the corpse of a verified rogue, P10. In the meantime, Kevin had places to be. He had one of the Varona's two shuttles outfitted for an orbital jaunt, so Natasha and he left only a few hours after their arrival. As he watched the wheel-shaped station vanish against the marbled immensity of Venus, Kevin's confidence began to wane. Not his faith in his people, but in himself. He had come an awfully long way and risked a great deal for-for what? What did he really expect to find? There was no question of landing on Venus to investigate the anomaly. Oh, ships had gone down there, twice, and both times had discovered that reaching the surface was no problem. Leaving again was. Their own shuttle wouldn't even make it through the clouds of sulfuric acid that veiled the goddess of love, much less endure the nine-hundred-degree, ninety-bar kiss of her surface. Nevertheless, Natasha piloted the shuttle into geosynchronicno , he supposed that was Aphroditosynchronic-orbit over the south pole, where they waited, watching hurricanes chase one another through the roiling upper atmosphere. "We have oxygen enough to stay two more days. Lucifer Station keeps calling to ask if we need assistance." "Tell them no, again," he replied, wearily. "Continue to hail the surface." Natasha did so. He didn't sense any doubt from her, despite the two fruitless days they had spent, hovering above the planet. Her trust in him seemed in inverse proportion to his trust in himself. Another day passed. He sent down the second of the surface probes-he'd sent one the first day. He beamed messages in all languages and on all wavelengths, from modulated radar to gamma bursts. He remembered Lee Crawford, trying to speak to the stars with a flashlight. In the dark, two Shalakos came to him. Kevin could just make out the outlines of the surrounding pueblo, the ladder emerging from the kiva, where the great mysteries were kept. The Shalakos gestured, and he followed them into the deeper dark of the kiva. There they danced, and sang of the days when his people had been creatures with webbed toes and feet, of the days when they had lived far beneath the earth. As they danced, they became the twin war gods, the children of the Sun, shining with all of their father 's brightness. They sang of leading his ancestors from darkness to the world above. The world was overrun with monsters, dark and terrible, but the twins went among the monsters, killed them with lightning and fire. On they sang, these masked dancers, of evils over which they triumphed, and of greater evils still to come. In the end, they had to go. In the end, they could leave only a wonderful gift for the children, whom they had brought from the depths of the Earth, raised from slimy things living in the waters to the five-fingered people of the pueblo. In the end, one of the twins died, and the other dance
d away. Kevin approached the corpse, still shining with terrible beauty, still masked. He removed the mask. He saw beneath it his own face. "Sir!" He lurched awake, the dream stripping away from him, thoughts and feelings he hadn't experienced in eighty years remaining at the edge of his mind. He had rarely thought of and never believed those things so dear to his mother, that world of spirit and faith she inhabited. For eighty years, his mother's teachings had been nearly silent in him. Now they were awake. "Sir, there's something happening." "What, Ms. Alexander?" Waking was harder at his age, as if his body demanded practice for death. He rubbed grit from his eyes. "All of our sensors went down a few minutes ago," she said with remarkable calm. "All of them." "Tap into the satellite net." "That's down, too, and I suspect Lucifer Station is down. Something is jamming everything." Kevin pulled himself forward to the cockpit. The nose of the shuttle was pointed directly at the planet. Night bisected the view, clotted cream and darkness. Against the white and yellow arabesques , something was growing. A dot, a circle, not just coming closer, but blooming like an orchid, or perhaps like a beetle unfolding its wings. It was a ship, but a ship unlike any he had ever seen, and it continued to grow until there was no Venus, only the ship, its carapace scintillating, shifting vaguely and constantly. It opened a mouth and took them in. COME. The voice coalesced out of sudden static, as order emerging from chaos. It was impossible to tell if it was a voice of sound or the mind. He glanced at Natasha, who had gone alabaster. "Did you hear it?" "Yes, sir. Sir, hull sensors are back up. It's an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere outside, and pressure has equalized." He peered through the port, but beyond lay only darkness. "Well, Ms. Alexander," he said softly. "Let's go see your astronaut/angels. " As he set foot on the floor, faint patterns began to appear-like a phosphorescence he had once seen on the surface of the ocean at night. The light gradually rose, mother-of-pearl, glints flashing from a dragonfly's wing. It reminded him, too, somehow, of the kiva. So many echoes. And to the ear there was no sound, but below the level of sound-what Monkey used to sometimes call the "wind"--a faint modulated humming. Kevin couldn't actually discern anything specific-no thought, no emotion. Instead what he got was a sense of perfection, like seeing the best solution to a problem, of suddenly understanding the symmetry in a pattern that had--an instant before-seemed elusive and chaotic. Gaining confidence, he reached his mind out further. Again an overwhelming feeling of familiarity surged through him like a wave. I've been here. YES. A hundred times stronger than before, the voice filled everything. Where are you? Who are you? Kevin asked. 1 AM HERE. 1 HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE. And the Shalako stood before him, blazing light and glory, its headdress like the rays of the Sun. A sense of awe-worship even-smote him so hard he almost tumbled to his knees. And something sounded inside of him, as a string sounds when a like- tuned string vibrates nearby. Vision engulfed him. He saw a war, fought on a scale beyond imagining. The enemy was darkness; the ships, black spiders. Worlds fell before them, whole races perished. They were entropy, they were the end of everything, they were the monsters out of the birth of time ... An explosion of images, too much to understand. The war ended, but only for a while. They were not gone, the monsters, only waiting. Their enemies waited, too, these things that looked to him like Shalakos, like angels, like gods because it was the only way he could understand them. They waited, and they prepared the younger races for what was to come. Even the race so young it knew only the vaguest echo of the last war. Humanity . Two came, together, to prepare them. One died ... The experience devolved into images, so fiercely bright and alien that he felt himself slipping away. He was dying, all that was him hurtling into nothing. But there was a way, a piece that could remain, a container that had been prepared for it. A place to wait, and sleep, and one day w ake. He went into that place and rested. He was back in the cave, in his mother's arms, and he felt her slipping away, and himself along with her, and the storm, the light, the Shalako, the gift. The moments became one, the death, the resting, the gift. The images became one. And he understood-some of it. You made us, he told the Shalako. Took some of us, altered us for centuries, brought our genes back to Earth, implanted them in people. YES. To stand against these monsters. To save ourselves. YES. The gift-my gift-it was from you, somehow. What was it? Why do I see your-brother? Why do I feel what he felt? THE MIRROR NEVER SEES ITSELF THE RE. FLECTION NEVER IS ITSELF Kevin wanted to rephrase his questions, but there was a silent punctuation to the Shalako's reply, a certainty that this vague riddle was his last word on the subject. You-led me here. YES. Why? What am I supposed to do? A momentary pause, like looking over the edge of a very high cliff. EVOLUTION CRAWLS TO IMPERFECTION. IT ENDS IN EXTINCTION. And it was gone. The light faded. GO NOW. Back on the shuttle, surrounded once again only by space, Kevin stared out at the stars, seeing now the terror that lurked between them. The Enemy. He felt a hatred for it that was and wasn't his. He heard the words of the Shalako. Natasha coughed softly behind him. "Sir?* "Yes, Ms. Alexander?" "When you- What did it look like to you?" "A bright spirit. My mother. Myself." "I saw an angel." "I suspect it isn't so much what you see as what the thing you see represents." "It was-it was wonderful." "Yes." "What do you think he meant, at the end? It sounded almost like he was telling us to do something." "Evolution crawls to imperfection." Kevin sighed. "I should have seen it long ago, but I didn't. I've wasted time." "I don't understand." "I was right, about the need to produce powerful telepaths. You saw the enemy?" "I saw-terrible things. Creatures of darkness." "Yes. But we can hurt them, somehow-or our children can. I think that's why one of the-angels-died. I think the enemy found them on Earth, saw what they were up to. They had to fight, then, to protect the secret. Protect us. They made us, Ms. Alexander . They took the raw stuff of humanity and made something better . I think they started very long ago, helping us along, guiding us. But just over a century ago, they gave us the final push, the final gift. Now it's up to us. The ship is gone, isn't it? And the anomaly?" "Yes, sir." "Yes. He stayed here until we found him. Now he's gone." "Evolution crawls to imperfection?" "Yes, of course. Evolution is about reproduction, nothing else. It never produces anything `better' except in that sense. It evens out extremes in preference to flexibility. What we want is an extreme--the best telepaths possible. Evolution is a blind process. Natural selection can't plan for anything, it can only respond- with glacial slowness-to present conditions. But sentient beings can plan and design. We are outside of evolution now, beyond it, free of its limitations. Telepaths weren't produced by evolution; better telepaths won't be produced by it either. Not fast enough, anyway. It's up to us to take up the work where our creators left off. It's up to Psi Corps." He smiled faintly. "The mirror never sees itself." They were silent for a time, and Natasha fell asleep. He held himself up against the gentle pressure of their acceleration, gazing down thoughtfully at her. She had been a good aide. A good friend, even. He trusted her more than any living person. But he didn't trust her this much. He didn't trust her with this. This was his mission, his burden. He still had life enough and time to do the things that needed to be done. Psi Corps was already on the right course-he had done most of the right things. He had known. How was still unclear-had the dead Shalako somehow passed a piece of its soul to his grandfather , thence to his mother, finally to himself? Or was it more subtle than that, an imprint on the genes that formed neurons, a program, software that would lie dormant until triggered by certain input? He didn't know, and didn't really care. All he really knew was that he no longer had any doubts. His mistake had been the underground, and there he had let emotion cloud his judgment. For Psi Corps to be what it had to be. some unpleasant things had to happen to its members. His love for Ninon Davion and her daughter-his daughter, Fiona-had led him to rationalize a wrong and almost disastrous course. Ninon would not have wanted to see her daughter in the Psi Corps he was creating. But his sentiment was as nothing when measured against the greater need. If humanity fell, was extinguished, the struggle of teep against mundane was meaningless. Only an organ
ized force could stand against the coming darkness, and only the Psi Corps could create it. He would spare Fiona if he could, but the resistance had to end. And it would. very soon. His mission. His burden. He extended his fingers until they lightly touched Natasha's face. And recoiled. The Shalako-or whatever it really was-had left something there. Something small, almost unnoticeable, but something in her brain. Like a seed. He brought his fingers back down and did his work very lightly. She would remember everything, but never desire to speak of it, save to him. When he died and she died, then no one would know. But the machine would have been built by then. The machine would run without knowing why. It was best that way-a machine that knew its purpose, its destiny, might fight against it, try to steer its own way. Humanity-and telepaths-no longer had the luxury of that sort of spurious freedom. He settled back into his own couch, weary, seeking sleep without dreams. In her own dreams, Natasha Alexander saw the being of light, and it looked back at her with a fight that illuminated thought and bone and blood and marrow; it looked upon her genetic structure and was pleased. IT WILL BE YOU, IF THE DARK. NESS COMES SOON, the light said, OR ONE IN YOUR LINE, IF THE DARKNESS COMES LATER. YOU, OR THE ECHO OF YOU, WILL NEAR THE CALL, AND YOU WILL COME TO US, AND WE WILL FINISH THE WORK WE BEGAN IN YOU. And as the light faded, Natasha Alexander wept tears of ultimate love, and dreamed of being finished: gleaming, indestructible , whole. And she knew one thing: They would meet again.