How could he be dead?
I love him! We are destined to be together…
Aren’t we?
Then, she heard a soft voice nearby, croaking with pain in the darkness:
“Lora.” It was Machiko’s voice. Somehow, she was still alive. Chen rolled toward the sound, and what she saw broke her heart. One of Machiko’s legs had been blown clean off, and her torso looked unnaturally twisted, damaged beyond repair. Chen knew in that instant that Machiko would almost certainly die. Blood was dripping from her mouth as she reached a weak hand forward, clutching a small object, trying to pass whatever it was to Chen.
“Take it,” she croaked. “Here.”
Chen leaned forward, reaching out her right arm to take the object. She gasped in pain at the stretch, gritting her teeth as she closed her own fingers around it and brought the thing back to her chest. “What is it?” she whispered, though she already knew what it was. It was the Xeilig Ark.
“I… found it,” Machiko coughed. “Beside his throne. Use it, Lora. Use it and get out of here. You’re the only one who can.”
Chen shook her head. Her eyes were filled with tears. The Xeilig Ark felt heavy and cold in her hands. No. This isn’t what she wanted. “I won’t leave you, Lora.”
Machiko laughed, but the action sent her into a short coughing fit. “It’s… too late. Go. I love you.” Suddenly she smelled something - flared her nostrils, sniffed once more. Wildflowers, that was what it was. Just blooming; it must be spring.
And there was thunder - she cocked her head, strained her ears. Yes, spring thunder, for a spring rain. To make the flowers bloom.
Yes, there… she felt a raindrop on her lips. She licked the delicate droplet… but wait, it wasn’t sweet water, it was salty, it was… a teardrop.
She focused on Chen once again, and saw her crying. She spoke again, even weaker - almost inaudible. “You can change everything. Go back in time. Kill him before any of this has a chance to happen.”
Chen looked at her, not saying anything.
“Kill him,” Machiko urged again. “Lora, you have to kill him.”
“But Machiko…” Chen protested. Explosions from the space battle outside jarred the bridge in earnest, crumbling one entire wall, splitting the ceiling. A jet of blue flame shot from a gas nozzle nearby. Just beneath it the floor began to melt.
Machiko pulled herself closer. “You are the Stone…”
With that, she closed her eyes, and Machiko Famasika died.
A tremendous explosion filled the back of the bridge deck with fire, knocking Lorelei Chen flat to the ground. Slowly, she rose to a sitting position, grunting through pain. Then suddenly -
Light.
An intense light pierced the air around her, coming from everywhere. It was a majestic light, like the first light of the universe, stabbing through the walls of reality. Chen closed her eyes against it, almost blinded by its intensity, then when her eyes adjusted she peered through them again. She had never seen such brightness, such Heavenly Light.
“What…?”
There, through the Light, she saw… herself?
An angelic figure resembling Lorelei Chen emerged from the intense light, moving straight toward the dark figure of Lord Damarus, who stood in the crew pit below, commanding his impossible cosmic Storm.
Lord Damarus turned, distracted, and saw the figure of light.
“You,” he hissed. “There’s nothing you can do. You don’t have the power to stop me.”
The Figure of Light, this… ascended Lora, stared back at him with a neutral expression. “But I do,” she said.
Damarus braced himself, then chuckled a little nervously. “You can’t kill me either.”
“I can fight you.”
“Well, you can’t win.”
“It won’t matter. You won’t be able to do anything but fight me back.”
Damarus sneered. “What are you going to do?”
The Figure of Light started to walk toward him. “Something I should have done a long time ago.”
“Oh, no,” Damarus roared. “No. No! Nooo!”
He raised his hands to try to stop her. The Figure of Light seemed to dissolve, losing its corporeal form, into pure Light. As it reached him, Damarus too morphed into white Light, his human host body falling to the ground, dead. The two Lights merged, and then rose up through the ceiling of the bridge deck.
Lorelei Chen stared up at the ceiling, bewildered. Just what exactly had she witnessed? Some kind of angel?
Her future self?
Her… dead… self?
Absently, she clutched at the Xeilig Ark, watching as the bridge of the Retribution crumbled around her. Everything was growing faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter. An eddying murmur filled her ears, and a strange, dumb confusedness descended on her mind.
The Xeilig Ark grew hot in her hands.
The dim suggestion of the Retribution seemed presently to fall away from her, and she perceived the sun hopping swiftly across the sky. She became aware that the ship had been destroyed and she had come into open air, but she seemed to be going too fast to be conscious of any moving things. The twinkling succession of darkness and light was excessively painful to her eyes. Then, in the intermittent darknesses, she saw a faint, abstract glimpse of stars, of a wonderful deepness of blue, a splendid luminous colour like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating band; and she realised, finally, that she was travelling through time.
But to where, crashed the sudden thought inside her head.
To where?
29
Seven weeks had passed since the final battle. For all intents and purposes the Empyreal Sun had been defeated - their fleet destroyed - though several thousand survivors were now imprisoned on Earth, and sporadic fighting continued in some of the more remote star systems of the Terran Alliance. Their presence lingered also in the form of countless refugees that crowded nearly every spaceport, and most tragically of all in husks of the worlds the invaders had trampled and destroyed on their relentless and devastating Inquisition.
The Nommos Empire had fallen. Though the Nommos people themselves had survived, they now faced a battle against extinction: with the loss of their homeworlds and many of their major colonies, supply lines to their outlying systems had been severed, bringing a dark age upon the remaining inhabitable worlds. Millions would perish in the ensuing chaos, with aid unable to reach them in time.
Earth itself had suffered huge losses during the war. The surface of the planet had been devastated, and millions of its inhabitants had been killed. Half again as many had been rendered homeless, lost their families, or worse. Once again, major changes would be needed, politically and socially, for mankind to move on from the terror inflicted by Damarus.
Victory, and freedom, had come at a great price.
Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory…
The sun had set beneath a thin layer of western clouds, and the colours of the evening sky were beginning to fade into the encroaching darkness of night. Leaning on the chest-high wrought-stone railing at the edge of the old Parliament Building roof, listening to the breezes whispering by her ears, Princess Esme Mazzic gazed out at the lights and vehicles of the Silver City below. Buzzing with activity, slowly recovering from the damage of the battle, there was something strangely peaceful about it.
Or maybe the peace was in her. Either way, it made for a nice change.
Twenty metres behind her, the door out onto the roof opened. She knew who it had to be. And she was right. “Esme?” Ammold Paramo called softly.
“Over here,” she called back, grimacing out at the city below.
“Quite a view, isn’t it?” Paramo commented, coming up beside her and gazing out over the city. “Must bring back memories
for you…”
She threw him a patient look. “Translation: How am I feeling about my homecoming. You know, Ammold - just between us - you never were very good at subtlety.”
“Sorry,” he smiled. “Too much time spent around Machiko, I guess.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. Machiko. Lorelei. Cristian.” She shook her head. “I can’t begin to imagine how you are feeling.”
He sighed, and nodded, looking sad. “Machiko’s entire family was lost.”
She averted her gaze. “I’m sorry I even brought it up.”
“It’s… okay,” he said. His thoughts wandered, turning to the future incarnation of Lorelei Chen he’d encountered ten years earlier, in Damarus’ throne room at the Battle of Laputa. He remembered what his Lorelei always told him: that the past could be changed for the better. Somehow, she’d travelled through time on that day. Something told him he’d be seeing her again. He knew she wasn’t dead - at least, not yet. Shaking the thought aside, he smiled at Esme, his face turning serious again. “So how are you feeling?”
Esme looked back out at the lights. “Strange,” she told him. “It’s sort of like coming home… only it isn’t. A lot has changed here since I was outcast. I wonder if I’m the right person for this job.”
“I could think of nobody better,” Paramo told her. Princess Esme had been elected as the new Chief of State of the Terran Alliance, a role she had reluctantly accepted.
“You know, I’ve never really stood here and just looked at the city like this,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”
“Like you…” Paramo said, then looked away.
Esme grimaced. She’d been right in her suspicions: he was here to rekindle their love for each other. But so much had changed since the old days. She was so young now…
“It’s ridiculous,” she said to him. “What you’re thinking. You know it, and I know it.”
He took a deep breath. “Is that what you believe in your heart?”
She looked at him. “I don’t know, Ammold.”
“My body may be much older than yours,” he told her, “but my heart has always belonged to you, Esme. You know that.”
“I know.”
He touched her hand. “We can be together again, Esme. I know we can.”
She sighed. “I have to think about it.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “Just… let me know. When you’re ready.”
“Sure.” She threw a sideways look at him.
“I love you.” He touched her hand again, then smiled. “Well, I’m going home. It’s late. Good night, Esme.”
He turned and walked away across the roof. Esme turned to gaze out at the lights of the city again. Ammold was probably one of her last links to the past… and she was letting him walk away.
Her past was over. It was time to get on with the future. And the Terran Alliance was that future. Whether she liked it or not.
Behind her, she heard Paramo open the roof door. “Hang on a minute,” she called after him. “I’ll come with you.”
With a shock, Lorelei Chen realised that she was no longer moving through time.
Her eyes flashed open. She could see the reddish sky above her, wisps of dark-green clouds floating by. Impossible! How could this be? She remembered being on the bridge of the Retribution. She remembered the ship collapsing beneath explosions…
She felt her body gasp for air. She took in a deep breath and let it out. Impossible, it may have been, but that felt good. An insect buzzed annoyingly close to her face. She reached out a hand to swat the insect; when she did, she realised it was huge, a creature unlike any she had ever encountered before. At least, not where she had come from…
She stared at the insect, fascinated. It looked like a giant fly, the size of her fist.
Slowly, she realised that she was still holding the Xeilig Ark. The small object felt cold to the touch now. Cautiously, carefully, mindfully, she put her free hand to the ground beside her and pushed herself up until she was sitting. She was in a grassy clearing near a slow running stream. There was no one around her, no buildings, no vehicles. She listened for any sound of civilisation and heard only the water burbling, the breeze blowing through the leaves and grasses, mighty insects buzzing.
Where am I? she thought.
She knelt at the stream, cupped her hands in the water, and splashed the water over her face. She brought her hands down to the water again and froze. She looked in the water, disbelieving.
That could not be a reflection…
She looked up, toward the source of the creature casting the reflection in the water.
How was this possible?
“No matter where you go, you know I’ll find you,” the Figure of Light said. “No matter where you’ve been, I’ll bring you home.”
For an evanescent moment, Chen thought she saw the faces of Machiko, and Cris. But they were ephemeral; a moment later they disappeared altogether.
It gave her a momentary sadness, but then the Figure of Light took her hand, and drew her closer in, to her and to the others, back into their circle of warmth, and camaraderie; and love.
BOOK III: COSMOS INFINITUDE
ACT SEVEN – ENTER THE COMBINE
0
Time was not linear. Far, far from it.
Time wrapped in on itself, converged and entwined and embraced events and feelings and moments, then danced away into separate gleaming, shining, precious strands that stood alone and resonant before merging again into the vast stream.
The Overmind rested and dreamed, and time wove itself in and around and through it. Memories fluttered through its mind like gossamer-winged insects: a word that shattered centuries, a thought that changed the course of a civilisation. Individuals whose insights and aspirations and even greed and fear turned seemingly inalterable tides of destiny into something new and fresh and hitherto inconceivable. Moments where everything teetered precariously on a crumbling brink, where something as intangible as an idea would send everything hurtling into oblivion or pull it back to safe, solid ground.
Each thought, word, deed, life was a mere drop in the vast ocean of time, constantly merging and separating to merge again. The concept would challenge some minds, the Overmind knew; but its mind had been destined to hold such contradictions as things being separate and having no separate identity. Grasping such elusive concepts was what it was created for.
Over all these thoughts of words and lives and ideas floated a terrible urgency and fear. Time was not linear; time was shifting and changing. But there were patterns that floated to the surface, their interwoven strands so clear and strong that even the dimmest minds could grasp them. Inevitability? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Again and again the pattern appeared in the swirling waters of time and destiny, submerging and manifesting with a cold precision that made even the Overmind quail. Could this pattern represent what the Combine had been searching for, for so long?
All the knowledge it held was precious; every memory, every sound, scent, sensation, voice, word, thought. All were vital to the Combine.
But this knowledge, of the pattern that had happened so often before and was about to happen again - ah, this was what made the Overmind more than important to the Combine.
It was what made it indispensable.
It opened to what was out there, every second that ticked by in its nonlinear, unique majesty challenging it to close in on itself, to not expose itself to the pain of the paradoxical debris caught in the swollen river.
The Overmind could not allow itself such luxuries.
Not when the horrific knowledge of what was happening, and what was certain to come, polluted the waters of time in its psyche. Not when the promise of power was so great.
It summoned its energy, and sent forth the cry.
The Time had come.
1
Light.
The first light of morning, filtering down from the sky, painting highlights on the white bark of Aspen trees, and melting away the ch
illed darkness of night.
Rural New Haven, Connecticut. A farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, an early summer’s day in the Year of Our Lord AD 2012…
The house was unassuming: half-timbered, with white paint peeling gently on the western side and clematis climbing up the plaster. The chimney pots were steaming, and you knew, just by looking, that there was something tasty simmering on the stove top beneath. It was something in the way the vegetable patch had been laid out, just so, at the back of the house, the proud gleam of the leadlight windows, the careful patching of the roofing tiles.
A rustic fence hemmed the house, and a wooden gate separated the tame garden from the meadows on either side, the copse beyond. Through the knotted trees a stream trickled lightly over stones, flitting between sunlight and shadow as it had done for centuries, but it couldn’t be heard from here. It was too far away. The house was quite alone, sitting at the end of a long, dusty driveway, invisible from the country lane whose name it shared.
Apart from an occasional breeze, all was still, all was quiet. A pair of white hula-hoops stood propped against the wisteria arch. A teddy bear with an eye patch and a look of dignified tolerance kept watch from his vantage point in the peg basket of a green laundry trolley. A wheelbarrow loaded with pots waited patiently by the shed.
Despite its stillness, perhaps because of it, the whole scene had an expectant, charged feeling, like a theatre stage in the moments before the actors walked out from the wings. When every possibility stretched ahead and fate had not yet been sealed by circumstance, and then -
“Kimberley!” Her father’s impatient voice, some distance off. “Kimberley, where are you?”
And it was as if a spell had been broken. The house lights dimmed, the curtains lifted.
A clutch of hens appeared from nowhere to peck between the bricks of the garden path, a crow dragged his shadow across the garden, a tractor in the nearby meadow puttered to life. And high above it all, a girl of eleven pushed the lemon spangle she’d been sucking hard against the roof of her mouth and sighed.
The Complete New Dominion Trilogy Page 53