Imperial Night

by Eric Thomson

  “You can’t worry about conspiracy theorists, Charis. Sure, they’ll raise Cain, but most of the people won’t listen. I dare say a great majority will be reassured the government is taking their safety so seriously it’s prepared to impose the harshest measures.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said with a slight shrug. “It’s just that most of us here didn’t serve in the military or police and never thought about law enforcement in worst-case scenarios. Suspending civil liberties is alien to us.”

  “Madame Vice President.” DeCarde briefly raised her hand. “I lived through the breakdown of civil order on Coraline during the rebellion against Dendera’s governor general there. A frightened or angry mob with power weapons can quickly overwhelm even the best-trained troops, and every household on Lyonesse has at least one hunting gun. Letting people know ahead of time will make a difference. The last thing we want is potentially infected folks spreading the plague because of insufficient controls or out of sheer ignorance. The president must invoke his emergency powers the moment reiver ships appear in this system so the military and the police can deal with matters unhindered. Once the danger passes, the declaration expires, and our civil liberties come back into force. At least until the next existential threat arises. Besides, the president can only suspend them for thirty days. After that, it takes a two-thirds majority vote in the senate to keep emergency conditions in place.”

  “Folks.” Morane leaned forward and placed his hands on the tabletop. “This is one issue I won’t discuss at length because there is no other way. That alone should convince you how serious I am. The Defense Department will issue a directive aimed at the civilian population, the military, and the police informing everyone what will happen the moment I declare an emergency. Once that’s done, the uniformed branches will prepare contingency plans and carry out practice runs. To deal with an identified and immediate threat, the police will come under military control, and the chief constable will take his orders from General Barca.”

  He looked pointedly at the Public Safety Secretary, who signified his understanding with a silent nod.

  “After this meeting, the Attorney General will draw up the requisite executive order invoking emergency measures, ready for my signature in case of need.”

  “It’ll be on your desk by the end of the day, sir.”

  “Thank you.” Morane stood to pre-empt any further interventions and left the cabinet room.

  — 40 —

  Stearn gave yet another senatorial candidate favoring greater political participation by the Order a burst of energy to strengthen her charisma as she addressed a thick crowd in downtown Trevena’s main square under a tropical sun. While doing so, he idly wondered why many of the people backed by Hecht and his cronies seemed weak. Not physically, to be sure, but none so far struck him as displaying remarkable strength of character, the sort he’d sensed in someone like Brigid DeCarde. Was it because they could be more easily manipulated or influenced?

  He gave Loxias a sideways glance, wondering whether Hecht was using the Order’s chief administrator to advance his own goals. Did the industrialist know or suspect something about the talent, or was he secretly one of those who believed in rumors that the Brethren harbored mind-meddlers in their midst? Or did he think the Order silently supporting specific candidates by showing up at rallies, speeches, and events sufficed? Under Gwenneth’s long rule as abbess, the Void Sisters came to be held in high respect if not awe for their selfless work as healers and counselors of exceptional skill as well as chaplains in the Defense Force.

  When the crowd finally perked up as the candidate’s speech took on a fierier edge, Loxias muttered ‘well done’ under his breath. Stearn withdrew his touch, feeling drained as usual. The fact he was doing the work while Loxias expected the glory became more irksome every time the chief administrator took him to political events or meetings with Hecht’s cabal.

  Like all Brethren, Loxias could shield his mind so nothing escaped and disturbed the abbey’s peace, but he possessed only an ordinary friar’s talent, which meant a smidgen more than the general population. Was it possible for Stearn to influence Loxias and take his place at the head of the Lindisfarne faction? Become the man who would enter the corridors of power instead of being a mere tool?

  Yes, Loxias saw Roget as the first abbot, although it would probably not happen when Gwenneth finally retired but was a strong possibility once her successor did so. That would make him the Order’s Summus Abbas, capable of charting their future within the republic, but how many years would he wait while doing Loxias’ bidding?

  Stearn believed he was more powerful than any sister by now, with a few exceptions such as Marta, and certainly outstripped every friar. Why shouldn’t he spearhead the Lindisfarne Brethren’s campaign and use Loxias as a figurehead?

  He reopened his mind and sent tired tendrils to touch Loxias, looking for a reaction, something that proved the older man could sense him.

  Nothing. Loxias’ eyes remained on the candidate, now wrapping up her speech.

  Stearn pushed against Loxias’ shielding. He found it flimsy and unable to prevent unauthorized entry. Of course. The sisters would make sure the friars couldn’t keep them out. So much for their pieties and oaths. Still no reaction from Loxias. He was unaware of mental tendrils working their way into his mind, tasting his aura.

  Stearn felt a forceful character, which he expected, and something he thought might represent overweening ambition, also not a surprise, but no trace of the serenity common among the Brethren, especially the sisters. Loxias struck him as a driven man, looking for something to fill a hole in his soul and not knowing what.

  But how to influence him so that Stearn might covertly become, if not quite the most powerful man in the republic, then the one sitting behind the presidential chair, whispering into the incumbent’s ear, a sort of gray eminence. He projected joy at Loxias, aiming it toward the notional hole in his soul, and watched him out of the corner of his eyes. Almost immediately, the chief administrator’s face lit up, and a goofy smile split his beard, proving friars, even the most senior among them, were just as vulnerable as the laypeople on whom Stearn tested his abilities. So far, so good. Then an idea struck him.

  He projected an image of himself and a sense of love at Loxias. Moments later, the chief administrator looked at him and said, “I’m not sure if I ever told you this, but you’re like a son to me, Stearn.”

  That night, the terror dreams returned, leaving Roget a sweat-drenched wreck.

  **

  “You look exhausted.”

  Amelia gracefully lowered herself onto the wooden bench beside Marta, who liked to gaze out at the peaceful lagoon before the hustle and bustle of the communal evening meal. The younger sister often joined her in silent contemplation or quiet conversation beneath the tall umbrella-like native tree.

  “Probably because I am exhausted.”

  “Seled?”

  Marta nodded. “We finally made a breakthrough this afternoon. The weeks I spent conditioning her weren’t wasted.”

  “Excellent news. Congratulations. You truly are the Order’s most skilled trainer.”

  A tired shrug.

  “I merely use the Almighty’s gift as intended.”

  “What now?”

  “Now? I wait for dawn in Lannion and inform Gwenneth.” Marta turned her head toward Amelia and smiled. “I know. That’s not what you meant. I’m of two minds about Seled’s future. What I glimpsed of her talent makes me believe it sits firmly in the mid-range for Sisters of the Void, which is to be expected since the treatment removed so much of her personality. Yes, you don’t fully agree with me that what makes us capable of opening our third eye is informed by everything we are and experience. Still, Seled is changing and will continue to change our views on many subjects, including those beyond the purview of conventional psychology.”

  “Agreed. And what are your two minds about her future?”

  “Do I leave
well enough alone at this point? Seled is a functioning member of this community and will probably stay so for the rest of her life. She’s highly intelligent and can be trained as a healer’s assistant, serving both inmates and exiles. Or, I work with her a bit longer and see if she has the strength to become a counselor capable of helping the more deeply disturbed prisoners.”

  “Why the indecision? Don’t I recall someone who looks remarkably like you tell me talents should be developed to the utmost?”

  “And so they should. Except Seled can never become a normal Sister of the Void. Though she’s no longer in thrall to her disorder, her past deeds are indelible. Even the Almighty cannot erase them.”

  “But the Almighty forgives.”

  “That isn’t the same thing, my dear. Our actions leave spiritual traces, no matter how deeply the mind is cleansed of them.”

  “True.” A pause. “Perhaps you should consider working with her just a bit longer so you can test the strength of her talent. It might help in deciding.”

  “An excellent suggestion. I shall do so.”

  As they watched Lyonesse’s sun kiss the horizon, Marta said, “I’ve never seen the green flash you islanders think is one of this world’s great wonders. Does it even exist, or are you putting me on?”

  “It exists, and I’ve witnessed it, but the atmospheric conditions must be just so, and that happens only a few times a year.”

  “How about now?” Marta gestured at the horizon with a deeply tanned hand.

  “No idea.” Amelia gave her former teacher a wry smile. “As you might recall, even in your state of extreme fatigue, I’m trained as a psychiatrist, not a meteorologist.”

  A few minutes passed while the sun transformed the lagoon’s rippling surface into liquid metal reflecting the heat of a thousand furnaces. The last moments of a tropical sunset passed with the rapidity Marta expected. But for a fraction of a second, a green glow seemed to overlay that final burst of light, and she gasped at the transcendent beauty.

  “The atmospheric conditions were ideal.”

  “I know.”

  **

  Seled, clad in a sister’s tropical lightweight one-piece garment, stopped on the threshold of Marta’s training room, and bowed at the waist.

  “Sister.”

  Marta, already sitting in the lotus position on the mat, returned her formal greeting with an equally grave nod.

  “Please enter and sit.”

  The former convict obeyed and settled on the mat facing her teacher. Their eyes met without hesitation or embarrassment.

  “I am ready.”

  “As before, enter the meditative trance and allow me into your mind. Once you achieve balance, try to open your third eye again.”

  “Yes, Sister.” Seled closed her eyes and slowed her breathing rhythm until it matched Marta’s.

  The latter reached out with her mental fingers and felt Seled’s shields dissolve, revealing once more a curiously empty mind with the gaping hole where her chaotic disorder once lived. She truly felt unfinished, as if the Almighty stopped her development in early adulthood, or perhaps even before. But Seled’s aura was suffused with the same calm as that of any other sister, the same serenity, and inner peace. Though Marta knew nothing about the old Seled, other than what was recorded in her file, she’d sat in on Amelia’s regular sessions with Supermax inmates and experienced firsthand the sickness that ate at their minds and rotted their souls.

  The lid covering Seled’s third eye trembled — or at least that was how Marta visualized something no one could adequately describe. The previous day, her eye opened just enough to prove it could do so, but without allowing Marta more than a momentary glimpse of what lay behind.

  With a suddenness that left Marta dumbfounded, the eye opened wide and unleashed a wave of horror that left her feeling as if she were suffocating. Her heart rate shot up as her mind slammed shut.

  She broke out of the meditative trance and saw Seled slump to the floor, unconscious. Marta reached out and touched her neck, looking for a pulse because she could not bear the idea of checking on the former inmate with her extrasensory abilities. Seled was merely unconscious, struck by whatever came through her third eye. Marta fished a communicator from her garment’s upper pocket. She tapped it.

  “Infirmary.”

  **

  Mirjam sat back in her chair, looking stunned after Marta described the incident. “Heavens above. How is that even possible? I’ve never heard of the like before today.”

  “We always knew our understanding of the third eye was nowhere near complete. At this point, I’d call it only rudimentary.”

  Marta sounded hoarse, her tone distracted, and her eyes never resting on a single spot for more than a second or two.

  “My apologies. I’m still shaken. I can only think what I saw was as close to the perfect manifestation of evil as I can conceive. If it were anyone other than me with Seled, you’d have two sisters in a coma rather than just one. We cannot go any further with Seled — if she ever wakes. Whatever is bottled inside her where no one can reach must stay there forever.”

  “No arguments here. A shame, though. If there’s a whole other dimension to the personality that can only come out through a third eye, Seled would be the ideal research subject, seeing as how so much of her overt characteristics were erased during treatment. It puts a new wrinkle on your theory about the origins of certain personality disorders. Perhaps what you saw was her actual soul. They say the evil we do accumulates within us and eventually rots a soul from the inside out until nothing more than a horrific presence remains.”

  Marta replied with a tired shrug.

  “There are things we’re not meant to see and places we’re not meant to go. Science cannot answer every question and never will, especially when it comes to the human condition. The countless horrific genocides that resulted whenever misguided ideologues tried to improve or control that which they never understood provides irrefutable proof.”

  “It’s about who exercises power over whom.” When Marta seemed about to object, Mirjam held up her hand in a restraining gesture. “Yes, that’s a simple way of summarizing a complex problem, but my words carry more than a hint of truth. Admit it.”

  “I wonder whether the hidden part of Seled, what you think of as her soul, would be capable of projecting such malevolence if we had trained her at a young age like most postulants?”

  “Provided your theory is correct, taking her in when she was sixteen or seventeen would likely have ensured her salvation because she wouldn’t have been tormented by her suppressed talent.”

  Another shrug. “I suppose. It makes me wonder about others we trained later in life.”

  “Like Stearn? If something equally horrific is hiding behind his third eye, you’d know. Mind you, he’s what? Twenty years younger than Seled? His soul can’t be corrupted by as much evil as hers was, so he should be okay.”

  A tired smile briefly crossed Marta’s face. “The theologians among us would have a field day if they found out.”

  “If?”

  “This remains between you, me, and Gwenneth. No one else will know, especially not Seled herself when she wakes. Imagine the chaos and confusion it would create among the Brethren should we even so much as hint that I saw another’s soul through her third eye. Many of the sisters would look, and it’s my belief we’re not meant to do so. That, in fact, it would be harmful. And you will not train any more former inmates who show a hint of talent beyond teaching them to shield their minds. What happened today can never be repeated.”

  Mirjam nodded formally, signifying she understood Marta’s words as a direct command. No one would dare gainsay the Order’s most gifted teacher on such matters, not even Gwenneth. Especially now that she seemed a mere shadow of her usual self.

  “Understood. And Seled?”

  “Her path will be as a simple healer’s assistant. We’ll tell her she lost consciousness because opening the third eye took more than she
could give and leave it at that.” Marta slowly climbed to her feet. “I must sleep, and once the sun rises over Lannion, I will speak with Gwenneth. Would you be a dear and book me a seat on the next available Clipper?”

  — 41 —

  Gwenneth studied Marta’s image for a few heartbeats once she finished her report. The latter looked as if she aged by several decades since their last video call.

  “This development is worrisome.”

  “Only if we let it worry us. The treatment program can continue, but we cannot teach those who come through anything more than simple shielding, such as we teach friars, even if they show a strong sixth sense. And any active third eye is definitely out of bounds. Knowledge of what happened to Seled must be suppressed. So far, it’s restricted to you, Mirjam, and me. I’ve already told Mirjam she must take the secret to the grave. You and I will do the same.”

  “A shame, though. But you’re right. This is not meant for us. Are you coming home?”

  “On tomorrow’s Clipper. It’s best if Seled doesn’t see me again, should she ever come out of the coma. We can’t tell when or even if that’ll happen. Cautious scans by Amelia show her mind is in a catatonic state. She’s simply not there. Perhaps the remnants of her personality were sucked in by the third eye as I slammed my mind shut against its emanations.”

  “I see.” Gwenneth sighed. “Why do I think we’ve been playing sorceresses’ apprentice with the human psyche over the last few years?”

  “Because we have, and we must stop. Otherwise, we might unleash a force capable of wreaking havoc on the Order and on Lyonesse.”

  “Did you see something?”

  Marta bit her lower lip as she nodded.

  “In the hours after my session with Seled, I saw a potential future where we face our own Ragnarok — the end of everything you and Jonas Morane created. I didn’t see what could trigger it, but I don’t doubt it somehow involves our mind-meddling. We are messing with things beyond our understanding. I see that now. Our arrogance has been blinding us.” A grim look hardened Marta’s face. “On second thought, perhaps we should not continue the experimental treatment program, period, and use conventional methods before we inadvertently create an uncontrollable monster. So far, no one beyond a few of us knows about its existence. If word gets out because of an incident, we will face a crisis beyond imagining.”