by S. L. Viehl
“What is that?” I heard one of the engineers say. “A flood? Some sort of solar bombardment?”
“No.” Unfortunately I had immediately recognized the way the blackness had refracted and then swallowed up the light. “It’s the black crystal. It’s awakened.”
Due to the influx of refugee ships, Xonea could not land at HouseClan Torin’s Main Transport; there simply wasn’t room for anything larger than a launch. Instead he joined the fleet of Jorenian vessels to help police the refugee ships and keep their evacuation to the surface orderly.
Some of the species fleeing the black crystal refused to land on the planet, fearing it would be invaded, and demanded supplies be delivered to them so they could continue on their journey out of the quadrant. The squabbling over resources soon stopped as reports of black crystal invasions came pouring in from other quadrants, as well as warnings of several well-armed fleets raiding planets not yet affected by the destruction.
The Ruling Council ordered the Jorenian fleet to assume defensive positions around the homeworld and throughout the system. I returned to Medical and prepared our patients to be shuttled down to the planet with all other nonessential personnel. ChoVa wanted to stay, and argued with me until I threatened to signal her father.
“The black crystal hasn’t reached Vtaga yet,” I told her. “The Hanar is evacuating the planet and coming here. He’ll want you to be safe on Joren.”
She snorted. “How can any of us be safe?”
We hadn’t told anyone that, thanks to some unique planetary features, the only two worlds the black crystal couldn’t invade were Joren and oKia. If we had, they would be quickly overrun by refugees and the raider fleets, and wars for possession would break out. “You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
Happily, Reever didn’t argue with me when I sent him to take Marel down to the surface. “As soon as I have her settled, I will return.”
“I’d feel better knowing you were there with her,” I told him. “Especially if the situation escalates.”
“Very well.” He took me in his arms. “But if it does, I want you to come home.”
There wouldn’t be any reason for me to remain on the Sunlace. “I’ll be on the first launch I can catch,” I said, and kissed him good-bye.
Maggie seemed amused when I suggested she shuttle down to the planet with the others. “Why would I go there? It is a null world.”
“Null meaning . . .” I rolled my hand.
“Nullify,” she prompted.
I could already feel the headache she was going to give me. “What does Joren nullify, besides your interest?”
She pondered that. “You do not have a word for it. There was one that was close. . . .” She trailed off and began thinking again.
After a few minutes I asked, “Can you describe it?”
“It does not have a description. It was, is, and will be. Wait.” Her face brightened. “Forever.”
I blinked. “Forever what?”
“That is the word I wished to remember,” she chided. “It is like that—forever—only more.”
“Are you saying that it’s the infinity crystal?”
“It can be anything. Except on null worlds.”
This could be the cure we had been searching for. “What happens to it on a null world?”
“It becomes null.” At my expression, she spread her hands out in a wide circle. “It loses cohesion and purpose. It sinks into the ground. It waits. We do not know why.”
I thought of the deposits of liquid protocrystal on oKia. “What does give it form?”
“Anything made by the Jxin. We plan to start life-forms like you on many worlds. You are the legacy we will leave behind before we ascend. You, and the other primitives.” She gestured at me and some of the nurses. “People.”
“How nice of you.” My version of Maggie had claimed to be the fabled founding race. This version confirmed it. “Too bad your legacy is quickly coming to an end.”
“There will always be life,” she said, her tone patronizing now. “You do not understand how it will be, but we will see to it.”
“You’ll see to it?” She had no idea of what was happening. I dragged her over to a console, and I showed her the vid of the colony being destroyed. “Is this how the Jxin saw to it?”
She drew back. “We did not make that.”
“That’s right, the Odnallak did,” I snapped. “Do you know what it is? I didn’t until now, but I finally understand. It’s a malignant form of the infinity crystal.”
“There is no such form.”
“In your time there wasn’t any—yet,” I corrected. “Not until you gave the Odnallak the last element they needed for the experiment. You told them where they could find the infinity crystal. After they used it to blow themselves to kingdom come, this is what it became.”
“I did not know.” She stared at me. “But it cannot be the same. The infinity crystal creates all life, while this—”
“Destroys it,” I finished for her. “We know.”
She wobbled, putting out a hand to brace herself against the console. “How far has it spread?”
I told her. I showed her the lifeless, crystallized planets it had consumed, the worlds where it was just awakening, and the refugee ships that had fled the destruction.
“They cannot escape it,” she said as she looked down at the display, and the waves of ships speeding toward Joren. “The people on those vessels are carrying it with them. If it was on their planets, it is in their bodies.”
“Even when it was in its dormant state, the black crystal still caused suffering and disease on many worlds,” I said. “What will it do now that it’s awake to the people who are infected with it?”
“It will use them as the infinity crystal does,” she said softly. “It will take over their minds and send them where it wishes to go—especially to the two worlds it has never been able to infiltrate and infect by itself. But it will not go to create life. When they land, then it will consume them and all other life it finds on that world.”
“How do we stop it?” I demanded.
“It cannot be destroyed.” She met my gaze. “Cherijo, the old one knew this would happen. He brought you to Odnalla so that you would think you were one of them. He wants you to help him save the undesirables.”
“He was wrong.” I had assumed all Joseph had been interested in was Maggie. “I’m not Odnallak.”
She looked at the deck.
In that moment, I could have personally fed her to the black crystal. “Maggie, this is when you tell me that I’m not Odnallak.”
“I do not know what you are,”she burst out quickly. “You are different. Not like us, not like the undesirables, not even like the primitives. You exist outside the timeline, the old one said to me. You were made to. He knew something, but he was destroyed with the other undesirables.”
“We think he’s still on the ship. One of them boarded just before we were thrown back through time, and he’s the only one who would have known to leave the planet.” I switched off the console. “We have to find him. Will you help me?”
She gripped my hand. “I will do anything to make this right.”
Maggie didn’t need a DNA sample to determine if someone was who they appeared to be, or an Odnallak in shift form. All she had to do, she assured me, was scan their minds. Unfortunately she could do that only in their presence, so we formed our own search team and began working our way through the levels.
“Angry, worried, saddened, frightened,” she chanted as she passed different crew members. “Longing, angry, hungry, angry.”
“What are you doing?” I asked as we entered Command.
“That is what they are feeling,” she said. “You should know this so you do not mistake them for the old one.”
“That’s fine, but you don’t have to say it out loud.”
Her brows rose. “But you cannot read my thoughts.”
She had a point. “If I suspect someon
e is the shifter, or you find him, do this.” I winked. “That will be our signal.”
“But that is an eye movement, not a data transmission.” She grinned at my expression. “I am having fun with you.”
God help me, she was joking. “Just wink if you identify him. What will he be feeling, by the way?”
Her amusement vanished. “Not what you do.”
“They have no emotions?” I’d seen plenty of anger on the Odnallak’s homeworld.
“The undesirables knew only greed and hatred.” She frowned. “The old one has lost those feelings, but he replaced them with something uglier. He is filled with endless rage.”
I stopped to inform Xonea of what we were doing, but refused his offer to send a detachment of guards with us.
“You need your men on the launches. Maggie can handle whatever Joseph throws at us.” I glanced at his busy console. “How are things on the surface?”
“The council is doing what they can to provide sanctuary for the offworlders and defuse tensions,” he said, “but there have been several attempts by refugees to take control of our territories.”
He didn’t have to tell me they’d failed. “How many dead?”
“Forty thus far, and they will not be the last.” He gestured toward the image of Joren on the viewer. “Soon there will be more refugees than we can accommodate, and our ships will move into position around the homeworld.”
I knew things had grown desperate, but surely it wasn’t this bad yet. “You can’t fire on refugees, Xonea.”
“We will not attack them,” he said. “We will try to turn them away. If they still attempt to land, then we will disable their engines.”
Leaving the refugees adrift in space.
“There’s something you should know.” I related what Maggie had told me about the refugees being infected with the black crystal brought from their homeworlds. “You have to tell the council so they can prepare.”
“I will,” he promised. “Cherijo, there is another decision that has been made by the HouseClans. Joren has never fallen to an invader, and we do not intend to begin now. When it is clear that the black crystal has come to our world, the HouseClans will send out one final signal to our kin. We will board our vessels, leave the homeworld, and fly into our sun.”
He was talking about committing mass suicide, I realized. “Isn’t there some other way?”
“There are many paths,” he reminded me, “but under these circumstances only one destination. We will not run in terror. We will walk within beauty together.”
“If it comes to that, just do one thing for me, please.” The tears I thought I’d lost stung my eyes. “Save some room on the Sunlace for Reever and Marel and me.”
He kissed my brow. “I could not go without you, little ClanSister.”
My wristcom chirped, and I answered the signal from Medical. “Yes?”
“Healer Torin,” one of the interns said, “you are needed here. A nurse on her way to report for her shift was attacked in the corridor. She was struck from behind and suffered a skull fracture and internal hemorrhaging. We have treated the injuries, but we cannot stop the bleeding.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes. Prep her and take her into surgery.” I excused myself and went over to where Maggie was making rounds of the helm officers. “One of my people was attacked. We have to return to Medical.”
As she followed me out to the lift, Maggie said, “These people do not hurt each other. The old one must have attacked your nurse, to stop us from finding him.”
I nodded. “That or he attacked her to serve as bait to lure us back to Medical. I want you to scan everyone in the bay as soon as we get there.”
“He should not have hurt the nurse,”she said suddenly. “They are kind and helpless. He is an evil bastard.”
At the rate she was picking up all my bad verbal habits, she’d be talking like the Maggie I’d known in no time. Not that we have much time left. A thought occurred to me. “Maggie, if the black crystal attacks us and destroys Joren, what will happen to you?”
“Nothing.” She glanced around the lift. “I will be left alone here until I can return to my time.”
If I didn’t fly into the sun with the Torin, I might face the same fate. “Doesn’t that scare you a little?”
“Once I spent two hundred solar years in solitude, so that I could rid myself of uncertainty.” She grimaced. “I would rather be with my people, or you.”
I felt a surge of unwilling pleasure. “I thought we primitives bored you.”
“You did at first,” she assured me. “But now I think you are the most interesting prim—female that I have ever encountered. I am very glad that someday I will create you.”
“When you do this next time,” I said as the lift came to a stop, “could make me a little taller?”
We entered Medical, where Maggie scanned the minds of the staff, and then looked at me and shook her head. I went to scrub and put on my gear while the charge nurse identified my patient for me.
“Intern Qrysala found Manal unconscious in the corridor,” she said. “He attempted to slow the bleeding, but his scans indicated the pressure on her brain was increasing.”
“How diligent of Qrysala.” And highly suspicious, as well. I turned to Maggie and deliberately dropped one eyelid. “Why don’t you come in and observe the procedure?”
She winked back. “I would very much like to do that.”
Before we went into the suite, I had Maggie put on scrubs and a mask. If the Odnallak assumed at first glance that the Jxin was a nurse, we might be able to catch him off guard.
We found the wounded nurse on the table and Qrysala busy hooking up her monitor leads. He saw us and gave me a very convincing, relieved smile.
“Healer Torin, thank the Mother you have come.” He walked around the table with a tray of instruments. “Manal’s condition is rapidly deteriorating. I would like to remain and assist you, if I may.”
I glanced at Maggie, who gave me another wink. “Oh, I think you’ve done enough, shifter.”
As Maggie came up behind him, the intern’s smile faded. “Why do you call me that?”
“I guess because every time I even think of the name Joseph, I want to puke.” Why was Maggie moving past him? “You do remind me of him, though. Attacking a woman from behind is the same kind of cowardly thing he would do.”
Manal suddenly sat up, the terrible wound on her head disappearing as she slid from the table. “You jump to conclusions so easily, daughter.”
I lunged at her, but she pushed me back with a simple sweep of her hand. Qrysala caught me before I fell, and held on to me with one arm as he extended his claws with the other.
“You’ve failed, shifter,” I told him. “Miserably. Your people are dead, and you didn’t stop the black crystal from being created. But I’ll give you another chance to try again.”
“Will you?” Manal seemed amused as Maggie took hold of her.
“You’re going to help us create another rift,” I told him. “Then we’ll all go back together to an earlier time, when the Odnallak were more reasonable, and you’ll tell them to stop the experiment.”
“We were never a very reasonable people, Cherijo,” was all she said.
“Or clever.” Maggie watched as Manal’s form shifted into the Odnallak. “This ruse was especially foolish. You have no avenue of escape now.”
“Why would I want to leave, now that I have you both exactly where I need you?” He tossed a sphere at her, and when it struck her chest, it exploded into the liquid he’d used to restrain us on Odnalla.
This time, however, it was black.
Maggie looked down as the liquid wrapped her in its tendrils. “You know this will not kill me.” She froze as the tendrils inched up and pierced her ear slits. “Cherijo, you must . . .” She fell silent, her jaw still hanging open.
“Maggie?”
“No matter how one feels about the Jxin, one has to admire the stunning breadth
and depth of their conceit and arrogance.” Joseph pulled a gurney up beside the operating table. “Doubtless she has told you ad nauseam how inviolate her body is. But while the young Jxin may be invulnerable, their minds are still not disciplined enough to resist true power.”
I didn’t know what he planned to do with Maggie, but he had black crystal, and I had to protect the Jorenians.
“Qrysala,” I said, never taking my eyes off the shifter. “Get out of here. Evacuate the bay. Tell the captain to initiate emergency breach protocol.” Sealing the entire level wouldn’t save the ship, but it might give the crew enough time to abandon it.
I stood between Joseph and the intern, prepared to do whatever I had to in order to give the Jorenian the chance to get away, but Joseph didn’t attempt to stop him from leaving. I reached out and groped for a panel, then punched in the code that engaged a quarantine seal.
“You have wasted entirely too much time and effort on these beings,” he said as he and Maggie moved around the table, coming at me from each side. “Now it is time for us to stop playing hide-and-seek. We will finish the work and return to our homeworld.”
“Terra doesn’t want us,” I said as I backed up against the door panel.
“A part of you has always known you were not Terran, Cherijo.” He stopped in front of me and reached out to catch some strands of my hair between his fingers. “Just as you know that I am your father.”
I struck his hand away. “You didn’t make me. Maggie did.”
“Interfering in my work does not constitute maternal privilege. But this time I am rather grateful that she meddled with you.” He glanced down and back up again. “Your new radiance is lovely, but it is not entirely natural, is it? ”
“Maybe I’ve been exercising and watching my weight,” I countered.
“Maggie has deceived you,” Joseph confided. “How do you think the last pure source of the infinity crystal ended up in your body?”
“I’m just lucky that way.”